For many tourism businesses, Google Ads can be one of the most effective ways to drive bookings. It puts your business in front of travellers actively searching for experiences, accommodation, attractions, and activities. But while Google Ads can deliver impressive results, it can also become a significant source of wasted marketing spend if campaigns aren't set up correctly.
We've audited hundreds of tourism campaigns over the years, and one thing remains consistent: most businesses are paying for clicks that never had a realistic chance of becoming a booking.
The good thing is that with a few strategic adjustments, it's possible to dramatically improve efficiency and help you get more bookings from the same budget. Let's look at 8 ways to avoid wastage.
Online Travel Agents (OTAs) like Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, Viator and Get Your Guide have become an important part of the tourism distribution landscape. They provide visibility, reach new audiences, and can help fill beds, tours, and experiences that might otherwise go unsold.
But we often hear from tourism businesses that "the OTA can handle the customer relationship."
While OTAs are great at helping guests find and book your business, relying on them to manage the entire customer relationship means you're giving away one of your most valuable assets: your customer data.
Why Being Dependent on OTAs is Costly
When a guest books through an OTA, the platform manages much of the relationship. They control the booking journey, the communications, and often limit the...
Typography is often one of the most overlooked yet influential elements of a tourism brand. When thinking about branding, one often tends to focus on logos, colours, photography, or storytelling. The fonts, however, are often overlooked or taken for granted. I have always believed that typography is the invisible thread that ties all your brand communications together and creates a sense of trust when used consistently. For tourism businesses, where experiences are often sold long in the ‘Dream’ stage, before they are lived, typography becomes a powerful tool for setting expectations.
Font Terminology
Before we talk about the importance of typography, let's clear up some terminology. You may have heard words like fonts, font family, typeface, type, and typography being...
The tech world is buzzing after Google I/O 2026, and for those of us in the tourism industry, things are about to get a lot more interesting. Google has officially moved from “AI as an assistant” to “AI as an agent,” and it’s another change to how travellers find and book your experiences.
Here are the three big takeaways you need to know:
1. The Search Box is Becoming a “Do-it-all” Engine
Google has completely reimagined the search box which will become integrated with AI Overviews and AI mode. It’s no longer just about giving you links, it’s about getting things done.
With new “information agents,” users can now ask to “find, check, book, or buy” directly within the search experience. Google is essentially building an agentic layer that handles the heavy lifting,...
When many people hear the word “brand”, they immediately think of logos, colours, fonts, or maybe a slick-looking website. And while those things are important, they are only the surface layer of branding.
Your brand is not your logo.
Your brand is the feeling people associate with your business. It’s the reputation you build over time. It’s what customers say about you when you’re not in the room.
A logo is simply the visual identifier attached to that reputation.
This misunderstanding is one of the biggest marketing myths we still see, particularly in tourism and hospitality, where businesses often invest heavily in visual design but underestimate the importance of consistency, customer experience, and trust.
We often talk about how tourism websites should be designed with one goal in mind: attract visitors from search engines (mostly Google) and convert them into bookings. While that objective remains the same, the way travellers discover and interact with tourism businesses is changing rapidly.
With AI-powered search experiences becoming increasingly common, travellers are no longer simply clicking through lists of search results. They're asking questions, receiving recommendations, comparing options, and planning itineraries directly within AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode/Overviews, Perplexity and more.
Given this, your website has three audiences to consider:
