How Booking.com Profits Handsomely From Bidding on Hotel Names
Photo Credit: Booking.com, in the example above, outbid the Standard High Line New York on its own name and appears higher in Google search results than the hotel itself. Google
Skift Take
Many cash-strapped independent hoteliers have been relatively laid back and allowed Booking.com to bid on their trademarked names and are even handing over their digital marketing and website creation to Booking.com's BookingSuite division. Given their resource constraints, that's not likely to change in any meaningful way anytime soon.
Few things can be more frustrating for a hotel brand, including independent properties, than when they see a major online travel agency such as Booking.com or Expedia outbid them in Google AdWords on the hotels' own trademarked brand names.
But it is a huge business for the online travel agencies -- and could entail a substantial hit for the hotel brands in lost business or higher distribution costs, according to a blog post by Spain-based Mirai, which focuses on enabling hotels to boost their direct bookings.
In fact, Mirai estimates that 15 percent of Booking.com's sales come from bookings gained by using hotel brands' trademarked names in Google AdWords.
Some 15 percent of Booking.com parent the Priceline Group's 2015 total revenue would amount to around $1.3 billion. Lodging-only Booking.com generates the vast majority of the Group's revenue so it would be safe to say that bidding on brands' keywords in Google generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue fo
