Someone researches a trip in January and books in April. Attribution windows that close in 30 days will tell you the campaign failed. Tourism paid media only works when the measurement matches how people actually book.
The gap between click and booking breaks most default setups.
Research happens weeks or months before purchase. Default lookback settings quietly credit the last touch and make your awareness spend look worthless.
Booking platforms often bid on your brand name and then charge you commission on the booking they intercepted. Whether to fight that is a real strategic decision, not a default.
Budget pacing that ignores your booking calendar spends heavily in dead periods and runs thin during the window when decisions are actually made.
People browse on a phone during a commute and book on a laptop at home. Without proper cross-device measurement, half your funnel is invisible.
Measurement first, because in this vertical the reporting is usually the broken part.
Before anything gets scaled, the data has to be right. GA4 and Google Tag Manager audited and rebuilt where needed, conversion actions deduplicated, Meta CAPI or server-side tagging where it applies, and offline conversion import so the platform optimises toward revenue instead of form fills.
Attribution windows and reporting set to your real research-to-booking lag, so campaigns are judged on the timeline your customers actually use.
Spend mapped to your booking calendar rather than spread flat, with distinct messaging for research-stage and ready-to-book intent.
Paid traffic dies on a bad page. I build and iterate the landing pages the campaigns point to, so the conversion path is one system instead of two vendors blaming each other. Fixed scope, tied to the campaigns, not open-ended web design.
A Looker Studio dashboard tied to your real conversion data, plus a written read on what changed and why. No 40-tab spreadsheet, no vanity metrics, no 'impressions are up' as a headline.
If OTAs are bidding on your brand, we will look at what that is costing you in commission versus what defending it costs in CPC. Sometimes fighting is right, sometimes it is not.
Some engagements have verified public numbers. Others are longer-running or confidential roles where I can speak to scope and approach but not exact percentages. I would rather show you the real mix than invent a case study.
Roughly $20K per month in Google Ads spend, in a market with $45 to $80 CPCs.
Ongoing role as Senior Paid Media Manager, leading strategy and a growing paid media team in a heavily regulated industry.
I go through the account, the tracking and the conversion path and tell you what is actually broken. You get the findings whether or not we work together.
Tracking, conversion actions and structure get corrected first. Optimising on top of bad data just makes you confidently wrong.
Campaigns, ad copy, audiences and landing pages built around how your buyers actually search.
Weekly optimisation against the metric that matters to your business, with a monthly written read on what moved and what is next.
Long-form writing on this topic from the blog.
Usually yes, if OTAs or competitors are bidding on it, because the alternative is paying commission on a booking that was already yours. The maths is specific to your commission rate and brand CPC, and it is worth actually calculating rather than assuming.
By setting attribution and reporting to match it, and by separating research-stage campaigns from ready-to-book campaigns so they are judged against different expectations.
Meta tends to work well for inspiration and remarketing in this vertical, and poorly as a direct-response channel for high-consideration trips. Search captures the demand that already exists. Most accounts need both, doing different jobs.
Often more so, because small operators are the ones losing most to OTA commission. The tactics scale down reasonably well.
A short form beats a long discovery call. Give me the basics and I will come back with a straight read on whether I can help, usually within one business day.
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