Hospitality performance marketing bids on brand and property-name searches to intercept clicks before they land on a commission-charging OTA, running Google Search for direct-booking intent and Meta for destination awareness. Reported against cost per direct booking.
What's included?
- Brand and property-name bidding to intercept OTA-bound clicks
- Meta campaigns for destination awareness and seasonal promotions
- Landing pages built to convert directly, bypassing OTA referral
Your brand name is being bought by someone else
Search for most independent hotels by name and the first results are often OTAs bidding on that name. Every guest who clicks there instead of your site costs you commission. Brand search campaigns look like an unnecessary cost until you compare them with the commission they save.
We set up brand and property-name campaigns first, then Google Hotel Ads and metasearch where your booking engine supports it, and only then broader destination campaigns. That order usually pays for itself fastest.
Why the mix works
- Brand search protects bookings you have already earned
- Google Hotels and free booking links put your direct rate next to the OTAs (Search Engine Journal, March 2021)
- Meta and Instagram build demand for a destination or a package before people search
- Retargeting brings back visitors who checked availability but did not book
Experimentation pays in travel. Booking.com runs around 25,000 tests a year, according to Harvard Business Review (Harvard Business Review, 2020), which is a big part of why its pages convert so well. We borrow the habit: every landing page and offer gets tested, not guessed.
What we measure
Cost per direct booking, direct revenue by channel and the share of bookings that came direct rather than through an OTA. We also watch average length of stay and cancellations, because a cheap booking that cancels is not a win. In the Deloitte and Google speed study, a 0.1 second mobile improvement lifted travel booking rates by 10% (Deloitte and Google, Milliseconds Make Millions), so we look at booking-engine speed too.
Pair this with hospitality SEO and hospitality social media for a full direct-booking plan.