A booking showing up as OTA revenue doesn’t necessarily mean the OTA created the demand. Operto CEO Tim Major explains how predatory OTAs intercept high-intent guests — and why hotels may not see the full story in their booking reports.
When a traveler discovers your hotel on an OTA, compares it with other properties and ultimately makes a reservation, the OTA has done what it was designed to do: introduce your hotel to a potential guest. But what if the guest had already chosen your hotel?
They search for your property by name on Google, click what appears to be the most relevant result and complete their reservation through a third-party booking site instead. The reservation is real. The guest is coming to stay. And somewhere in your systems, it may simply look like another OTA or affiliate booking.
But did the OTA actually earn it?
Watch: Inside the predatory OTA problem
Operto CEO Tim Major recently sat down with Bruce Jordan of Michael Jordan Hotels to talk about the growing predatory OTA problem, how these sites intercept hotel bookings and why hotels often struggle to see what’s happening.
Tim explains the difference between traditional OTAs and predatory third parties, what happens when those sites compete for your hotel’s branded search, and how AI and automation can help hotels fight back.
Distribution and interception aren’t the same thing
OTAs play an important role in hotel distribution. A traveler searching for “best boutique hotels in Miami” might discover your property through Expedia or Booking.com. The OTA introduced your hotel to someone who may not otherwise have found it. That’s valuable distribution.
But consider a traveler searching for your hotel’s name.
They already know you. Something (your reputation, marketing, reviews, a recommendation or a previous stay) has already created the demand. If a third-party advertiser appears in that search, captures the guest and ultimately processes the reservation through an OTA distribution network, that’s a very different journey.
The hotel created the demand. Someone else captured the booking. And the hotel may still pay a commission.
Look closer at the affiliate bookings in your reports
This is where things get particularly difficult to see. Your PMS can tell you where a reservation came from, but that doesn’t always tell you how the guest found their way there.
Depending on your PMS and distribution setup, some reservations may appear under a recognizable OTA such as Expedia or Booking.com. Others may be identified as an affiliate, an OTA affiliate, or under a source name you don’t immediately recognize.
Those distinctions are worth paying attention to.
Large OTAs operate affiliate and distribution networks that can make hotel inventory available through other booking sites. As a result, the source that ultimately delivers a reservation to your hotel may not tell you which website or advertisement the guest encountered first.
A guest could have already chosen your hotel, searched for it by name, clicked a third-party ad and completed their reservation through a site accessing inventory through a larger distribution network. What eventually reaches your PMS is a valid OTA or affiliate reservation. What you don’t necessarily see is everything that happened before it.
Your PMS can tell you who delivered the reservation. It can’t always tell you who earned the guest.
An affiliate booking isn’t automatically a predatory booking. But it can be a useful reason to look more closely, particularly if unfamiliar third parties are also advertising against your hotel’s name.
The missing part of the journey is happening on Google
This is what makes predatory OTA activity so difficult to understand from channel reports alone. The interception happens before the guest reaches your website or booking engine.
A traveler searches for your hotel by name. Third-party advertisers compete for that search. An ad can send the guest into an entirely different booking path. By the time the reservation arrives at the hotel, that part of the journey is largely invisible.
And simply Googling your hotel once isn’t necessarily enough to uncover it. Search results can vary by location and change over time, while advertisers, domains and campaigns can continually shift.
In the video, Tim explains how Operto ONE approaches the problem differently: continuously monitoring branded search, identifying third-party competition, managing hotel brand advertising, investigating potential violations and reporting misleading ads.
It’s about protecting the moment when a guest has already decided: I want to stay at this hotel.
So how much OTA demand is actually incremental?
This isn’t an argument against OTAs. They remain an important part of hotel distribution and can be incredibly effective at introducing hotels to new guests.
The question is whether every booking attributed to an OTA represents demand that OTA actually created.
When you’re reviewing channel performance, look beyond the headline OTA number.
- Which reservations came through your known OTA partners?
- Which are identified as affiliates?
- Are there source names you don’t recognize?
- And what appears in Google when someone searches for your hotel by name?
Those pieces together can give you a much better understanding of where your bookings are really coming from, and where direct demand may be getting intercepted. Because where the reservation ended up isn’t always where the guest journey began.
See who’s competing for your hotel’s direct bookings
Operto ONE monitors your hotel’s branded search to identify the third-party sites competing for guests who are already looking for you. See what’s happening with your hotel and find out where your direct demand may be getting intercepted.
