OTAs buy paid search ads on their suppliers’ company names, so a traveller who searched for you specifically can arrive through a platform that then charges commission on the booking. The fix is to bid on your own name: brand keywords are normally the cheapest clicks an operator can buy because the intent is already yours, and the ad sits above the OTA’s. It usually pays back within weeks and appears in no commission statement, which is why most operators never notice the leak.
There is a leak in most travel businesses that shows up on no invoice, appears in no commission statement, and costs more than almost anything else on the marketing budget.
See it for yourself
Open a private window on a phone, not logged in. Search your own company name.
Count what sits above your website. In most markets there is at least one paid result, and it is an OTA listing your own tours. That traveller knew your name. They typed it. They were going to book with you.
You will pay 20–30% commission on them anyway.
Why it is allowed
Google permits bidding on another party’s trademark as a keyword. What it restricts is using that trademark in the visible ad text, which is why the OTA’s ad says “Egypt Day Tours — Book Now” rather than naming you.
Many supplier agreements also permit it explicitly, and some require you not to outbid the platform on shared terms. Read yours. But in the ordinary case the practice is allowed, and the response available to you is commercial rather than legal: outbid them.
What it actually costs you
Work it out with your own figures. It takes five minutes.
- Monthly searches for your brand name — Search Console, or a keyword tool.
- The share of those that end in a booking. Use your own conversion rate.
- Your average booking value.
- Multiply, then take 25%.
For an operator with a recognisable name in even one source market, the annual figure is usually larger than the entire marketing budget being argued over. And unlike most marketing questions, this one has no uncertainty about intent: those travellers had already chosen you.
You are paying a finder’s fee on a customer who had already found you.
The fix, and what it costs
A single paid search campaign on your own brand terms. It is unglamorous and it is usually the best-performing line in the account.
The economics are unusual because you are bidding on a phrase nobody else particularly wants, against a landing page that is the most relevant result in existence. Quality score is close to perfect, cost per click is a few cents, and the conversion rate is whatever your site can manage — which is the one part you control.
- Exact and phrase match on the company name and its common misspellings.
- Sitelinks to the tours or rooms, so the ad is more useful than the OTA’s.
- A direct-only offer in the ad text where your agreement allows it.
- Negative keywords for review and complaint searches, which convert badly.
This is the first thing we set up in a paid media engagement, before anything aimed at new demand, because it is the only campaign where the intent was already yours.
The three objections
“I would get those clicks for free.” Some of them. Not the ones that go to the ad above you — and the paid result and the organic result together take more of the page than either alone.
“It feels like paying for my own name.” It is. The alternative is paying a commission on the same booking, which costs considerably more.
“My agreement says I cannot outbid them.” Then read it precisely, because those clauses usually cover shared generic terms rather than your own brand. If it genuinely covers your brand name, that is worth knowing as a cost of the relationship.
This is one step in a longer sequence. The order the rest of it goes in is on the OTA dependence page.
Our free audit covers search visibility, AI-answer presence, booking flow and what your OTA channel is costing you. Written, and yours whether you hire us or not.