OTAs: Friend or Foe? | The Hotel Marketing Playbook

If there is one subject that splits a room of hoteliers, it is OTAs. Some see them as the perfect distribution partner: filling beds in low season, delivering global reach overnight, giving smaller properties visibility they could never buy on their own. Others see them as a slow bleed on margin, a machine for eroding guest loyalty, and a channel that has quietly taken control of who owns the guest relationship.

Both views have merit. But neither is a strategy.

OTAs are not going anywhere. The question is not whether to use them. It is whether you are using them deliberately, on terms that serve your commercial goals, or whether they are simply running your distribution by default because no one has made a different decision.

This post covers what OTAs genuinely do well, where the relationship starts to cost you more than it should, and what a more controlled approach to the channel actually looks like in practice.

What OTAs genuinely do well.

It is worth being honest about this before moving on to the problems, because the hotels that manage OTAs well are the ones who start from a clear-eyed view of what the channel delivers.

Global reach at a scale you cannot replicate independently.

Booking, Expedia and Airbnb invest hundreds of millions annually in SEO, PPC and metasearch. They appear at the top of search results in markets where your property may have no brand recognition at all. For an independent hotel trying to attract international guests or corporate travellers outside its home market, that visibility has real value.

Trust infrastructure that guests rely on.

OTAs have built platforms that match precisely how guests research and compare. Guests can filter, read verified reviews, check cancellation terms and complete a booking in minutes. That experience is frictionless by design. Most independent hotel websites are not, which is a separate problem to address.

Demand support in need periods.

In shoulder season or during periods when direct traffic is quiet, OTAs can fill rooms that might otherwise go unoccupied. Used as a yield management tool rather than a default channel, that is a sensible use of the relationship.

Where the relationship starts to cost you.

The problems with OTAs are well documented. Commission rates of 15 to 25 %, and sometime even more, per booking, rate parity pressure that limits your ability to reward direct guests with a genuinely better price, and guests who remember the OTA they booked through rather than the hotel they stayed in.

But there are two areas that many hotels underestimate.

Brand bidding in paid search.

OTAs routinely bid on your hotel name in Google and Bing Ads. When a guest searches for you by name, having already decided they want to stay with you, they may see an OTA ad before they find your own website. That guest was already yours. The OTA is extracting commission from a booking you generated through your own reputation and marketing.

If you are not running branded PPC campaigns, you are leaving the door open. Your own brand search terms should return your website first. The cost of running brand campaigns is almost always lower than the commission cost of the bookings you lose without them.

Weekend rate undercuts on metasearch.

Many hotels discover that OTAs are quietly discounting on metasearch during Friday and Saturday evenings, when revenue teams are less likely to be monitoring. Mobile-only rates, closed user group offers and loyalty scheme discounts are the mechanisms. The result is that guests searching your hotel find an OTA rate below what your website shows, and book accordingly.

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Defending your brand and your rates.

Run branded PPC campaigns.

Your brand name in paid search belongs to you. Run campaigns on Google and Bing that ensure your website appears first when guests search your hotel by name. This is not optional if you are serious about direct bookings. The ROI is straightforward: you spend less per booking acquired through branded PPC than you pay in OTA commission for the same guest.

Monitor rate parity actively.

Real-time rate shopping tools exist for a reason. Implement one. Set up alerts for parity breaches and have a clear protocol for raising them with the OTA in writing. Parity compliance requires ongoing attention, not a quarterly review.

Give direct bookers a reason to choose your website.

Best rate guarantees do not convert because they require the guest to believe a claim without visible evidence. Tangible benefits do. Complimentary upgrades, early check-in, breakfast included, flexible cancellation on direct bookings only: these are specific, immediate and valuable enough to shift behaviour. The benefit needs to be visible on the homepage and on the booking page, not behind a registration wall.

Advertising on OTAs: when it makes sense.

Platforms such as Expedia TravelAds and Booking Sponsored Listings allow you to pay for prime visibility within OTA search results. You are paying both commission and ad spend, so the numbers need to work.

There are specific situations where OTA advertising makes commercial sense: entering a new market where your brand has no recognition, filling occupancy during need periods where direct demand is genuinely weak, or countering a competitor that is dominating your city page listings. The key is tracking cost per acquisition for each campaign and comparing it honestly against your alternatives.

This is a tactical tool, not a strategy. Used without accountability it becomes another cost centre. Used with clear objectives and exit criteria, it can generate incremental revenue that other channels cannot.

The metasearch problem.

Metasearch aggregators such as Google Hotel Ads, Trivago and Kayak pull rates from multiple sources and display them side by side. When an OTA is discounting, your direct rate appears higher in that comparison, and guests book through the OTA.

Rate monitoring alone is not enough. You also need direct-only perks that add value OTAs cannot replicate even at a lower price: a complimentary upgrade on arrival, early check-in, parking included. The goal is to make the direct booking the smarter option even when you cannot match every promotional rate the OTA is running.

Weekend monitoring matters specifically here. Have an out-of-hours protocol. Automation tools can alert your team to parity breaches in real time so you are not discovering Monday morning that your rates were undercut all weekend.

Accountability: measure every channel honestly.

Distribution strategy without measurement is guesswork. For every channel, track and report the following on a monthly basis.

Cost per acquisition across direct and OTA bookings.
Direct booking contribution as a percentage of total room revenue.
Revenue uplift versus commission drain by OTA channel.
Impact of brand PPC on direct booking volume.
Conversion rate of direct-only perks and benefits.

Set monthly scorecards and review them. OTAs are worth using when the numbers justify it. When they do not, you have the data to make a different decision.

The direct-first position.

The objective is not to eliminate OTAs. It is to reach a position where OTAs complement your distribution rather than dominate it. Where you are choosing to use them tactically, for specific markets and need periods, rather than relying on them because you have no credible alternative.

Hotels that have successfully reduced OTA dependency share the same foundations: a fast, friction-free direct booking experience, a visible and genuinely valuable reason to book direct, an optimised Google presence, and a consistent approach to converting OTA guests into direct guests over time.

None of this requires a large budget. It requires clarity about what is broken, the right priorities, and the discipline to follow through. The channel that controls your distribution today does not have to be the channel that controls it in twelve months.

“Your end goal is direct-first distribution. OTAs should complement, not dominate. Because the day they control your business is the day you lose control of your brand.”

OTAs: Love Them or Hate Them, Here Is How to Use Them Without Losing Control.