None of the three most visible escorted tour operators on Google UK buys the keyword "escorted tours". Titan Travel has 36 paid keywords, Wendy Wu Tours 4, Travelsphere none, and the keywords they do buy look like "japan tour holidays" (390 searches a month, £3.90 a click) or "solo tours to japan" (260 searches, £3.50), never the generic 880-search term that costs £2.98 (DataForSEO, Google UK, September 2026). That is the first clue to how campaigns work in this sector.
Google Ads for travel works when campaigns follow three things that are extreme in this sector: the destination, the travel dates and the seasonality of demand. A click costs £1-5 on almost every keyword we measured, but the buying decision takes weeks and demand can move sevenfold from one month to the next. Treat travel like any other sector, with the same budget all year and one generic campaign, and you spend without selling.
A caveat: "travel agency google ads" gets about 10 searches a month in the UK, and whoever searches it is looking for a consultant, not a holiday. The data in this guide comes from the keywords end customers type and from the campaigns of the leading operators. Hotels have different tools (Hotel Ads, commission per stay) and are covered in Google Ads for hotels.
What a click costs in travel
Less than most people expect. Here are the CPCs of the strategic keywords and of the ones Titan Travel and Wendy Wu Tours actually buy.
| Keyword | Searches/month | Average CPC | Top of page bid (high) | Who buys it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| escorted tours | 880 | £2.98 | £3.04 | none of the three leaders |
| group tours | 590 | £3.10 | £3.26 | n/a |
| tour operator | 4,400 | £1.92 | £2.69 | n/a |
| uk seaside holidays | 1,000 | £1.15 | £0.98 | n/a |
| solo tours to japan | 260 | £3.50 | £2.92 | wendywutours.co.uk |
| vietnam tours 2026 | 50 | £4.05 | £3.72 | wendywutours.co.uk |
| japan tour holidays | 390 | £3.90 | £3.74 | titantravel.co.uk |
| rome holiday packages | 1,300 | £1.37 | £1.13 | titantravel.co.uk |
| holidays spain 2026 | 1,000 | £1.52 | n/a | titantravel.co.uk |
| namibia holidays | 1,000 | £3.52 | n/a | titantravel.co.uk |
The median CPC across Titan Travel's 36 paid keywords is £2.33, with a maximum of £12.27 ("luxury tour to india"). Across Wendy Wu's four it is £3.50, maximum £4.05. For comparison, "hotels in london" costs £1.73 with a competition score of 0.98 on a 0-1 scale, because the OTAs crowd the auctions. "Escorted tours" sits at 0.69 and "tour operator" at 0.23. There is more room.
One thing we cannot fully explain: in our desktop scan of "escorted tours" no ad appeared at the top of the page. It may depend on the moment or the device (auctions are busier on mobile), so we do not treat it as absolute.
What Titan Travel and Wendy Wu actually buy
Titan Travel's 36 paid keywords fall into three families: destination plus holiday type (33 of 36 name a country or city: "rome holiday packages", "namibia holidays", "rail holidays to scandinavia"), destination plus year ("holidays spain 2026", "china tours 2027", "safari holidays 2027 from uk") and a handful of competitor names ("sandgrouse travel", 90 searches at £2.33; "wayfare travels"). Two contain its own brand, both tied to a destination ("titan new zealand tours").
Wendy Wu buys "format + destination": "solo tours to japan" (260 searches, £3.50), "solo trips to japan" (260, £3.50), "vietnam tours 2026" (50, £4.05), and one competitor query, "intrepid tours china" (90, £3.04), where its ad reads "China Escorted Tours | Save Up To £795pp". The ads point to the destination page, not the home page.
Travelsphere, first in organic results for "escorted tours", has no campaigns detected. DataForSEO's paid traffic estimates (around 100 visits a month for Titan) should be read with caution. The keyword structure, on the other hand, is solid evidence: you buy the destination, the dates and the format, not the category.
How to structure the account: one campaign per destination
On the accounts we manage, the structure that holds up best in travel is this one, in order of activation.
- Search by destination. One campaign for each destination on sale, with ad groups by format: "escorted tours japan", "group tours japan", "japan tours 2027". The budget is set per destination, so you can switch off Peru when it sells out without touching Japan.
- Search brand. It usually costs little and stops a competitor from buying your name, as Titan does with "sandgrouse travel". Keep it separate because its numbers inflate everything else.
- Search by segment, if you have the product: over 50s, singles, solo travellers, coach tours. "Singles holidays" gets 6,600 searches a month and "over 50s holidays" 480.
- Remarketing and Demand Gen aimed at people who viewed a destination page, showing the ad for that destination.
- Performance Max, only once the account has at least 30 well-tracked conversions a month. Before that it has no data to learn from.
Match types: phrase match on "escorted tours [destination]" and "group tours [destination]", exact match on the highest-volume keywords. We only switch on broad match in campaigns with conversions and stable smart bidding, because "japan holidays" in broad match also picks up "flights to japan" and "jobs in japan". Put the dates in the keyword: "japan tours 2026" peaked at 480 searches in October 2025 and fell to 50 by August 2026, and the 2027 version will build its own volume. Whoever searches it already has a date in mind.
The negative keywords that make the difference in travel
The same destination is searched by people who want information, jobs or flights. The negative lists we add to every travel account start here:
- Weather and information: "weather", "temperature", "when to go", "things to do", "map". "Weather in sharm el sheikh in february" gets 14,800 searches in January with a competition score of 0.01: lots of traffic, almost nobody bidding, because it rarely turns into a booking for a small operator.
- Zero price: "free", "cheap", "budget", "last minute deals" (unless that is your positioning).
- Do it yourself: "flights", "flight", "ferry", "car hire", "hotel", "apartment", "airbnb".
- Work and study: "jobs", "work", "internship", "visa".
- Formats you do not sell: "last minute" if you do not do last minute, "coach" if you fly, "cruise" if you have none.
- Other operators' brands, unless you are running a deliberate competitor campaign like Wendy Wu on "intrepid tours china".
Read the search terms report every week for the first two months. On a new account, in our experience, between a third and a half of the initial spend goes on terms that a negative list would have blocked.
Seasonality: when to spend and how much
The query "uk seaside holidays" goes from 320 searches in November 2025 to 2,400 in July 2026. "Package holidays" goes from 33,100 to 90,500, with the plateau from May to July. "Easter holidays 2026" alone reached 450,000 searches in its peak month, March. A budget split into twelve equal parts spends money in November that nobody is searching for in November.
The calendar we use has three phases. The early booking window (January-April for summer, with January the strongest month for many long-haul queries such as "escorted tours japan", 590 searches; September-November for Christmas, New Year and winter), where most of the Search budget goes. The search peak (June-August for beach holidays), where CPCs rise and much of the capacity is already sold. The low season, where Search shrinks to brand and remarketing stays on. Moving 60% of the annual budget into the first window is the single change that lowers cost per enquiry the most.
The minimum budget, worked out from measured CPCs
Let's do the maths with the figures in the table. With a CPC of £3.50 (the "format + destination" band Wendy Wu pays), £1,000 a month buys about 286 clicks. At a 3% conversion rate from click to quote request that is about 9 enquiries, at roughly £117 each. At 2%, 6 enquiries at £175. On "escorted tours japan", at £5.35, £1,000 buys 187 clicks: at 2% that is fewer than 4 enquiries, at £267 each.
The 2-3% is a working assumption taken from our accounts in other sectors, not a travel measurement: we do not have that figure and we say so. As a reference, on Macropix (B2B) the cost per enquiry in 2025 was €39.44, and on Valore Solare (solar) €70.78 across 1,506 enquiries in 11 months. An operator selling tours at £2,500-4,000 per person (the "from" prices in the ads and snippets of this SERP start at £2,599 and £2,690 pp) can carry a cost per enquiry of £120-180, provided one enquiry in four or five turns into a booking.
Hence the minimum budget: below £40-50 a day (£1,200-1,500 a month) an account produces fewer than ten enquiries a month and has no data to show which destinations pay. Better £1,500 on two destinations for three months than £500 on six destinations for a year.
Further reading: when Google Ads makes sense.
The landing page: the destination, with dates and price
The most common mistake is sending the click to the home page. Someone who searched "jordan escorted tour 2027" must land on the Jordan page with departure dates, price per person, what is included, places left and a short form.
The questions a customer asks in a travel agency are a good guide: budget, sandy beach or rocky coves, children or not, single room or shared. A landing page that answers them in advance converts better than one that describes the destination in general. The form asks for dates, number of travellers and departure airport: one extra field filters out the merely curious. WhatsApp sits next to the form, not in place of it, because chat enquiries cannot be tracked without an integration.
Further reading: how to build a landing page and why a website does not convert.
Tracking: fake conversions cost more than clicks
Before switching on a campaign we check what the account calls a "conversion". Valore Solare, when we took it over, was counting 15,267 conversions in a month against 5,467 clicks: technical events, not enquiries. Sunscape in 2024 had 1,487 "conversions" at €0.61 each. Same story. With numbers like these, smart bidding optimises towards nothing.
There are two primary conversions: the quote request submitted and the booking with deposit, if the site allows it. Calls and WhatsApp clicks go in as secondary: you look at them, but they do not drive bidding. The step few people take is importing confirmed bookings from the booking system into Google Ads, so the algorithm learns from people who bought. Up to three weeks can pass between enquiry and confirmation: that is the difference between optimising for enquiries and optimising for sales.
Further reading: how to set up Google Analytics.
Remarketing and Performance Max: the long decision cycle
A £3,000-per-person tour is not bought on the first click. Someone who visits the Japan page in January books in March, after comparing three operators ("Which escorted tour companies are the best in the UK?" is the first question Google shows on the "escorted tours" results page). Remarketing keeps you in that comparison for 30-90 days, with lists by destination visited and ads for that destination, not for the whole brochure.
Performance Max works with asset groups by destination and audience signals taken from people who have already requested a quote. We switch it on after Search, never instead of it. On Contesini, in another sector, local Search plus Performance Max produced 299 leads in seven months at €7.20 each: Search provides the data, Performance Max extends it.
The mistakes we find in travel accounts
- The same budget every month, while demand moves sevenfold.
- One single campaign with "holidays" and "tours" in broad match, buying flights, hotels and job ads.
- Landing on the home page, with the tour three clicks away.
- Conversions that count page views or menu clicks.
- No brand campaign, while a competitor buys your name.
- Performance Max switched on from day one, with no conversions to learn from.
- Campaigns paused in the low season, so the remarketing lists empty out just when the customer is deciding: people who visit in November often book in January.
Cost per enquiry falls when these mistakes are removed, not when the budget goes up. On Macropix it went from €94 in 2024 to €39.44 in 2025; on Valore Solare the first month produced 9 enquiries at €212 each and the average for the year came down to €70.78, 40% less than in the first quarter.
Google Ads or SEO?
For the three leaders the answer is in the numbers: Titan Travel has an estimated 86,089 organic visits a month and about 100 paid, Wendy Wu 127,675 against 2, Travelsphere 108,132 and no paid traffic at all. In travel, SEO on destination pages brings the volume, as we explain in the guide to SEO for travel and tourism. Google Ads does three things SEO does not: it sells this season's departures, it protects the brand, and it keeps you in the comparison through remarketing.
If you are starting today, the sensible order is: Search on the two or three destinations with the best margin, clean tracking, and in parallel destination pages written to rank, which within a few seasons will reduce spend on those keywords. How the two channels fit together is covered in SEO and Google Ads: how to create synergies; the reasoning on small budgets in Google Ads for SMEs.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Google Ads cost for a travel agency?
With the CPCs we measured on Google UK (roughly £1-5 on tour and destination keywords) and a 2-3% conversion rate, a quote request costs between about £115 and £175 on a £3.50 click. The minimum budget to get useful data is £1,200-1,500 a month, concentrated on the early booking window and on a few destinations. Management comes on top of click spend, as described on our Google Ads service page.
Is it worth buying the keyword "escorted tours"?
None of the three leaders does. It costs £2.98 a click and it is generic: whoever searches it has not yet chosen a destination. "Format + destination + year" works better: it costs £1.50-5 but comes from someone who already has a place and a date in mind.
Is Google Hotel Ads useful for a tour operator?
No. Hotel Ads shows prices and availability for individual properties in the Google Hotels module and requires a room feed. A tour operator or travel agency sells packages and works with Search, remarketing and Performance Max. The hotel side is covered in Google Ads for hotels.
When should summer campaigns go live?
Between January and April, when searches rise and departures are still open. In July "uk seaside holidays" peaks at 2,400 searches, but CPCs are higher and most capacity has already sold. For Christmas, New Year and winter the window is September-November.
Where to start
Open the search terms report for the last 90 days and sort by cost. If the top twenty rows include "flights", "weather" or "jobs", the first job is the negative list and the destination structure, not the budget. Then compare the conversions the account counted last month with the enquiries that actually reached your inbox: until those two numbers match, no optimisation will hold.
If you would like a view on your account with the figures from this guide to hand, get in touch.
