It seems almost unreal that a hotel would have any troubles receiving bookings when a guest is actively searching for its brands. After all, if travellers know your name, they should be directed to your website. Right? Well, not necessarily. Brand hijacking has become a problem of an enormous scale. Let’s look at what it means for your hotel and how you can fight against it.
What is brand hijacking in the hospitality industry?
Firstly, it is crucial to know exactly what the phrase ‘brand hijacking’ stands for. After all, you can’t solve the problem if you do not fully know what you are dealing with.
In the hospitality industry, the term is mentioned when another brand, usually an online travel agency, uses the hotel’s name in sponsored ads. It means that other brands adopt it for their own benefit. They essentially attract traffic to their websites while taking it from the hotel’s own pages.
It has been deemed unfair, not only by the hoteliers, but by many professionals in the industry – especially since many of the OTAs are too big for smaller hotels (or often even large chains) to fight with. Since Google ranks ads by their usability for customers and booking platforms are well known, they therefore attract many clicks. Those ads are often higher in the rankings than the websites of the hotels the guests have been searching for in the first place.
If this is still slightly confusing, let’s see what it means for hoteliers and their guests.
How does it affect hotels?
It is, of course, incredibly harmful for hoteliers. When guests don’t know the destination or the properties in your area, OTAs are very helpful, ensuring you receive bookings from travellers who might not have found your hotel otherwise. But what if the guest knows your brand? What if he or she has already stayed in it and loved it? What if the guest is not searching for general accommodation, but instead wants to book at your website? What if that direct booking opportunity is snatched from you by an OTA? It happens more often than it should.
It means that instead of receiving the full price for the reservation, you only get a part of it because the OTA makes you pay a commission for the booking that could have been direct, but isn’t.
