The run of bad press for artificial intelligence (AI) continues, and this time it’s the turn of “predatory” online travel agencies (OTAs). These are the websites that look like a legitimate hotel website but are far from the real deal. They hijack a hotel’s name, misleading people into thinking they are booking directly.
AI is now amplifying the reach of these websites, according to hospitality technology company Operto, which has published a new report that sheds light on the scale of their disruption to both hotels and guests.
With predatory websites operating in a gray area of affiliate networks, it is also alleged that mainstream OTAs are providing much of their inventory.
Who are the culprits?
Some 1.1 million predatory advertisements targeting hotel-branded searches were discovered in the space of one month, according to Operto's State of Predatory OTAs 2026 report. The findings are based on an independent analysis of the Google Ads Transparency Center covering May 22, 2026, to June 21, 2026.
Those ads impacted 204,000 hotels globally, with the average affected hotel facing 3.9 competing ads against searches for its own brand. Properties in the U.S. are most impacted, with hotels targeted by an average of 6.6 predatory ads each.
During the 31-day study window, nearly half of the 1.1 million predatory ads detected worldwide came from just one website, GuestReservations.com. Other websites running ads included Room77.com, HotelsOne.com, Reservations.com and ReservationCounter.com.
“They're actually hijacking the hotel’s name. And if you contact them, they also will say that they're the hotel. So, they're completely hijacking the entire booking experience,” Operto CEO Tim Major told PhocusWire ahead of the report’s publication.
“The hotels think this is a regular OTA, but it's not a regular OTA. They're getting all the losses that they would get through an OTA. They don't know who the guest is, they don't have their email information, the person is charged a higher fee and the cancellation policy is messed up.”
Double impact
As well as losing a direct booking, a hotel’s front desk or reservations teams will often be left facing dissatisfied guests due to complaints over fees, cancellations or missing reservations. In the report, Operto said it reviewed 232 Better Business Bureau complaints filed against GuestReservations.com between July 2023 and May 2026.
Among those reviewed, 46% referenced cancellation policies the complainant described as deceptive or false, 38% came from guests who said they believed they had booked directly with the hotel and 34% referenced hidden or undisclosed fees. A further 5% involved guests arriving at a property that had no record of their reservation.
“Hotels end up dealing with the downside anger of the customer too,” Major said. And while so-called secondary OTAs will undercut a hotel’s direct rate, rates published by predatory OTAs are typically higher.
“Because they charge higher than the best available rate, they're actually getting a bigger commission in this arrangement too,” Major said.
Gray area
Predatory OTAs have caught the attention of San Francisco city attorney David Chiu, who this summer filed a lawsuit against two of the sites listed in the report, GuestReservations.com and BookOnline.com.
Filed on behalf of the People of the State of California, the lawsuit states the websites are “imitating authentic hotels and scamming travelers into paying significantly higher rates” and that they engage in deceptive business practices in violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law.
At a time when hotels are looking to increase revenue through direct booking channels, any websites that divert guests will be particularly unwelcome. But the attorney highlighted that with inflation straining household budgets, excessive markups only add to the burden.
The lawsuit also alleges Booking Holdings aided and abetted the hotel booking scam, as it “acted as the websites’ hotel room inventory supplier”.
Major questioned whether the action was a political statement, and said he was unsure how far it would go.
“We've heard of other people trying to take legal action, but they're not successful because these ads will still include just enough language that keeps them out of legal fault but allows this to continue,” he said.
The Operto report cites one hotel, Alaska Frontier Inn, found 25% of its bookings were intercepted by predatory OTAs.
“Guests were often convinced they’d booked directly, even though staff tried to explain what had happened, and management could see in its own reservation system that the bookings had actually come through Booking.com or Expedia,” the report reads.
“All parties will disavow they have anything to do with this group,” Major added. “They play in this middle ground where everyone disavows them, but nobody enforces what they're doing or enforces action against them … I don't think it breaks the terms of use of the affiliate network to a degree that they enforce it.”
Expedia declined to comment on the report. PhocusWire also reached out to Booking.com, GuestReservations.com and BookOnline.com for comment.
‘We play Whac-A-Mole’
AI is making the industry’s hotel-name hijacking problem even worse, according to Major.
“As we researched, we found it goes back to 2015, but now with AI tools and algorithms, predatory OTAs have been able to amplify what they do. And they run it in a much more sophisticated way,” he said.
He added that Operto is developing tools to counter the problem, including AI agents that act as “investigators.” Any websites they find are reported to Google and ultimately blocked from search results.
“We found AI can attack this problem in ways pre-AI technology couldn't attack it,” he said.
However, after they are reported and blocked, Major claimed predatory OTAs are able to set up “shell companies” almost instantaneously, and the process is repeated.
“We play Whac-A-Mole against them,” he said.