Hotels Fight Back: Operto Unmasks Predatory OTAs Hijacking Bookings and Draining Direct Revenue

Written By: Tuhin Sarkar

Tuhin Sarkar

Tuhin Sarkar is a Senior Journalist at Travel and Tour World with more than 10 years of experience in travel and tourism journalism. A post-graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication from Jadavpur University, he combines strong research, industry knowledge and storytelling expertise to produce engaging, insightful and impactful travel news and fascinating feature stories.

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August 18, 2026 4:52 PM

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Operto has launched a new hotelier assessment designed to reveal how predatory online travel agencies are competing for hotel brands in search, helping properties identify potential direct-booking losses, estimate commission leakage and strengthen protection of their branded Google Search presence.

How Are Predatory OTAs Affecting Hotel Direct Bookings?

Hotels across the travel and tourism industry are increasingly facing competition for bookings from third-party websites at the very moment a traveller has already decided where to stay, with Operto’s latest assessment aiming to make that hidden challenge easier to identify and address at individual property level. The Vancouver-based hospitality technology company said its assessment allows hotels to discover which third-party booking sites are bidding on their names in Google Search, understand their visibility and estimate the potential financial impact when travellers are diverted away from official direct-booking channels.

Predatory OTAs, sometimes described as rogue OTAs, can purchase advertising linked to hotel brand names and appear prominently when travellers search for a specific property, potentially placing third-party booking options ahead of or alongside the hotel’s own official website. For the global travel and tourism sector, this creates a difficult final-stage distribution challenge because hotels may spend heavily on brand building, digital marketing and guest acquisition, only to see another booking intermediary compete for the customer after the destination or accommodation decision has already been made.

What Does Operto’s New Assessment Reveal to Hotels?

Operto said its data shows competing OTA advertisements appear in branded hotel searches 75% of the time, while the average hotel is competing with nine predatory OTAs for visibility around its own name, with sites including GuestReservations, ReservationsDesk and HotelsOne identified among the more active competitors. The new assessment is intended to translate those wider market concerns into property-specific intelligence, giving hotel operators a clearer view of exactly who may be targeting their brand and what the resulting diversion could mean for revenue.

The process can reportedly be completed in around five minutes, allowing hoteliers to identify third-party sites bidding on their property name, review their search visibility and estimate possible commission leakage and lost direct revenue associated with diverted bookings. This approach could be particularly relevant for independent hotels operating in the competitive travel and tourism marketplace, where limited internal marketing resources can make continuous monitoring of search advertising and online distribution considerably more difficult.

Why Is Brand Hijacking Becoming a Major Tourism Industry Concern?

The issue extends beyond the commission cost of a booking that moves from a hotel’s direct website to an intermediary, as hotels can also lose part of their control over the guest relationship when a third party becomes involved in the transaction. Travellers may encounter additional fees, unfamiliar booking conditions or restrictive cancellation policies without fully understanding that they have completed their reservation through a website other than the hotel’s official channel, creating possible friction for both the guest and the property.

Operto estimates that 8% of direct bookings are lost to third-party booking sites, highlighting the potential importance of protecting high-intent branded searches in the modern travel economy. For tourism businesses, branded search is especially valuable because the traveller has often progressed beyond the discovery stage and is actively seeking a particular hotel, meaning the competition at this point can directly affect conversion, customer ownership and the economics of hotel distribution.

How Does Operto ONE’s AI Marketing Agent Respond?

Once a hotel has identified its potential exposure, Operto ONE’s AI Marketing Agent is designed to take action by continuously monitoring Google Search, running and optimising brand-protection campaigns and identifying predatory OTAs that may be advertising against the property. The technology can also report misleading advertisements to Google, while carrying out campaign execution and optimisation in the background so hotels do not need to constantly inspect search results or manually manage every aspect of paid-search activity.

Hoteliers still retain oversight of important actions and receive proactive updates when conditions change, while the AI Marketing Agent can provide answers about which sites are advertising against a property, how search visibility is evolving and how many direct bookings have potentially been recovered. This combination of automation and operational visibility reflects a broader shift across travel and tourism towards AI-powered tools that are designed not simply to analyse data but to perform ongoing marketing tasks that traditionally required specialist expertise and substantial management time.

Can Independent Hotels Gain Better Protection Against OTAs?

The new capability has been positioned as a way of making branded search protection more accessible to independent hotels that may not have dedicated distribution teams, advanced paid-search expertise or the resources required for constant campaign monitoring. By combining a quick property-level assessment with an AI-driven response mechanism, Operto is seeking to help smaller and independent accommodation providers understand their exposure before taking practical action to protect direct-booking opportunities.

Tim Major, CEO of Operto, said hotels invest enormous effort in earning a guest’s decision, yet multiple third parties can still attempt to intercept the booking even when the traveller searches specifically for a property by name. He said the assessment gives hoteliers clearer visibility into competing sites, their search presence and the possible cost in commissions and lost direct revenue, while the Marketing Agent provides continuous monitoring and protection that would previously have demanded significant time and specialist knowledge.

“Operto’s new assessment represents a highly practical step forward for hotels navigating an increasingly complex digital distribution environment, because it gives operators the ability to see a problem that can otherwise remain hidden until valuable direct revenue has already been lost. For the wider travel and tourism industry, greater transparency around branded search competition can help hotels protect guest relationships, improve distribution efficiency and strengthen confidence in direct booking channels. Combining property-level intelligence with AI-driven action could be particularly valuable for independent hotels, enabling them to access sophisticated brand-protection capabilities without building large specialist marketing teams.”

— Anup Kumar Keshan, Editor-in-Chief, Travel And Tour World

What Could This Mean for the Future of Hotel Marketing?

Operto’s launch underlines how hotel marketing is evolving from broad demand generation towards more precise protection of travellers already demonstrating strong booking intent, with AI increasingly taking responsibility for continuous monitoring and optimisation. As travel and tourism businesses invest more heavily in direct digital relationships, the ability to identify brand hijacking, quantify potential leakage and respond quickly could become an increasingly important part of hotel revenue, marketing and distribution strategies.

The assessment also highlights a fundamental challenge for hotels in the wider tourism ecosystem: generating traveller interest is only one part of the commercial journey, while maintaining control of that relationship until the booking is completed is becoming equally important. For properties seeking to increase direct bookings, stronger visibility into search competition and automated brand protection may therefore offer a practical way to reduce unnecessary intermediary costs while improving the clarity and consistency of the guest booking experience.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Operto’s new hotelier assessment?

It is a property-level assessment that helps hotels identify third-party booking sites competing for their branded searches, understand their search visibility and estimate potential commission leakage and lost direct-booking revenue.

What are predatory or rogue OTAs?

Predatory or rogue OTAs are third-party booking websites that may bid on hotel names in search advertising, potentially competing with a hotel’s official website when travellers search directly for that property.

How long does the assessment take?

Operto says hotels can complete the assessment and gain visibility into relevant third-party search competition in approximately five minutes.

How does the AI Marketing Agent help hotels?

Operto ONE’s AI Marketing Agent continuously monitors Google Search, runs and optimises brand-protection campaigns, identifies competing predatory OTAs and can report misleading advertisements to Google.

Why is branded search important for travel and tourism businesses?

Branded searches often indicate high traveller intent because the customer is already looking for a specific hotel, making these searches especially important for protecting direct bookings, revenue and the long-term guest relationship.