Google Ads for tourism
The OTAs are already bidding on your name. Bid back. If you run accommodation or activities and you are not running well-targeted branded Google Ads on your own name, you are leaving the door open to the OTAs. They are the biggest spenders in travel and they bid on your brand anyway. Branded search is the lowest-cost, highest-return ad you can run, and it beats paying 20% commission on customers who were already looking for you.
Search your own business name and look at what comes back. There can be four ads and three Google listings before your organic result even appears, and the OTAs are usually sitting in those slots. The customer who typed your name wanted you. Whether they book direct or hand an OTA 20% of the booking depends on who owns that page.
The economics are hard to argue with. One direct-booking campaign we run turned about $23,000 of ad spend into roughly $717,000 in tracked bookings, and in its peak month the full cost of acquisition through Google Ads was about 4.2%, against 20% or more through the OTAs. Same customer, same booking, a fraction of the cost.
If you do not bid on your own name, an OTA will
Search for your own business name right now. Before your organic listing appears, there can be four ads and three Google listings, and the OTAs are usually in them. They are the biggest spenders in travel, and they bid on your brand whether you like it or not. Someone who typed your name, who already wanted to book with you, clicks the OTA ad instead, books the same room or the same tour, and you pay 20% commission on a customer you had already won. Sometimes 30%.
A well-targeted branded campaign closes that door. Yes, you are bidding on your own name. But the alternative is not free traffic, it is the OTA taking that click and charging you a fifth of the booking for it. Branded search is the lowest-cost, highest-return ad you can run. Even if it is the only campaign you ever run, it is worth running.
For an accommodation or activity operator this is the fastest single move to claw bookings back from the OTAs. We go deeper on the whole commission problem in our direct bookings vs OTAs guide.
Think of Google Ads as a commission. Then compare it
Here is what this looks like when it works. One direct-booking campaign we run turned about $23,000 in ad spend into roughly $717,000 in tracked bookings. In its peak month, the full cost of acquisition through Google Ads, all spend plus our fee, was about 4.2% of booking revenue. The same bookings through an OTA would have cost 20% or more.
That framing matters. Operators tell us they cannot compete with the OTAs on advertising, and on raw budget that is true. But you do not need to outspend them everywhere. You need to win the searches that already belong to you, at a fraction of the commission you are paying now. When you treat your ad spend as a commission rate and put it next to the OTA's rate, the decision makes itself.
This works for accommodation providers and activity operators alike. If you want to know what those numbers could look like for your business, that is exactly what a Growth Plan Session is for.
Native conversion tracking, not a GA4 import
There is a setup detail that quietly decides whether your Google Ads account gets better or worse over time: where your conversion data comes from. Many accounts import their goals from GA4 instead of using Google Ads' own native tracking. That import can under-report your real results by up to 50-60%.
A real example. For one scenic-flights operator we work with, native Google Ads tracking reported around $42,000 of bookings. The GA4 import for the same activity showed about $31,000. Same ads, same customers, a 25% gap in that case, and we have seen far bigger. Feed Google the smaller number and its bidding works with less data, your reports undersell the channel, and sooner or later someone cuts the budget on the campaign that was quietly earning its keep.
So we set up native Google Ads conversion tracking on every account we run, wired through your booking system so the revenue is attributed to the ad that earned it. The full story on measurement lives on our analytics and conversion tracking page, and it underpins everything in our tourism and hospitality marketing work.
Google Ads for tourism operators, answered
Why should I pay to advertise on my own business name?
Because if you do not, an OTA will, and they already do. Search your name and count what sits above your organic listing: there can be four ads and three Google listings first. The OTAs are the biggest ad spenders in travel and they bid on brand names as standard. A branded click through your own ad costs you cents on the dollar. The same customer booking through the OTA costs you 20% commission, sometimes 30%. You are not paying for traffic you would have got free, you are protecting bookings you were about to lose.
Is a branded campaign worth it if my budget is small?
Yes, and it is where a small budget should start. Branded search is the lowest-cost, highest-return ad you can run, because the person searching already knows you and already wants to book. Even if it is the only campaign you run, it is worth running. Once it is defending your name, you can decide whether broader campaigns make sense for your business, which is a conversation we can have in a Growth Plan Session.
How does Google Ads actually compare with OTA commission?
Treat your ad spend as a commission rate and compare directly. On one direct-booking campaign we run, about $23,000 of spend produced roughly $717,000 in tracked bookings, and in the peak month the full cost of acquisition through Google Ads, spend plus agency fee, was about 4.2%. OTA commission on the same bookings runs 20% or more. Those are the two numbers to hold side by side. The wider picture is on our direct bookings vs OTAs page.
What is wrong with importing conversions from GA4?
It under-counts. Importing goals from GA4 into Google Ads can under-report your real results by up to 50-60%. For one scenic-flights operator, native Google Ads tracking showed around $42,000 of bookings while the GA4 import showed about $31,000 for the same activity. That gap has two costs: Google's bidding optimises on incomplete data, and your reports make the channel look weaker than it is, which is how good campaigns get their budgets cut. We set up native tracking on every account, wired through your booking system.
Will this work with my booking system?
Almost certainly. We have set up conversion tracking across a wide range of booking systems used by accommodation and activity operators, including Rezdy, ibis, PrenoHQ, RMS Cloud, Bookeo, BookDirect, SynXis, FareHarbor and Operator Hub. Some make it easy, others mean going through the vendor, but the goal is always the same: every booking attributed to the ad that earned it. Our analytics and conversion tracking page covers how we approach it.
Book a Growth Plan Session and we will look at what you are paying the OTAs, what a branded campaign would cost instead, and where the growth is for your business. Straight answers, whether or not we work together afterwards.
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