Choosing a PPC agency is one of the most consequential decisions a tour operator or travel brand can make in digital marketing. A good agency will grow your enquiries, lower your cost per booking, and give you a competitive edge against the OTAs you’re bidding against. A poor one will burn through your budget, produce reports you can’t interpret, and leave you no better informed than when you started. Here’s what to look for – and what to ask.
Takes the time to discuss your unique goals
Any agency promising results before they’ve understood your business is a red flag. Travel PPC is complex – your goals, audience, booking window, product margins, and competitive landscape are specific to you. An agency that opens with impressive-sounding case studies from unrelated industries, or that recommends a strategy without asking about your seasonality, conversion tracking setup, or current CPA targets, hasn’t done the work to understand what good looks like for your account.
Before you approach any agency, be clear about what you actually need: is it more enquiries at a sustainable CPA? Better performance during peak booking windows? A specific destination or product type that’s underperforming? The clearer you are, the more revealing the agency’s response will be.
Communication style
Transparency is non-negotiable. You should understand what your budget is being spent on, what’s performing well and why, and what’s being changed and why. Ask specifically about reporting frequency and format, who your day-to-day contact will be, and how performance is reviewed. A well-run travel PPC account involves regular strategy reviews, particularly around seasonal transitions – the approach that works in January’s booking peak looks different to the strategy for quieter mid-year periods, and your agency should be communicating those adjustments proactively.
Specific PPC experience
Travel PPC has specific characteristics that require genuine expertise: long consideration cycles, OTA competition, variable-value conversions, seasonality, and the challenge of tracking enquiry-to-booking attribution. An agency with strong results in retail, finance or SaaS may struggle with the nuances of travel. Ask to see case studies from tour operators, airlines, ferry companies or activity providers – not just broad “travel” claims, but evidence of managing the kind of account structure your business requires.
Also ask who will actually manage your account. The person presenting the pitch is often not the person doing the day-to-day work – understanding the experience level of the account manager who will own your campaigns is as important as the agency’s overall credentials.
Digital marketing process
A structured PPC process – from initial account audit through keyword research, campaign structure, conversion tracking setup, testing cadence and performance review cycles – is a sign of an agency that manages accounts systematically rather than reactively. In travel, the process also needs to account for channel interaction: how do paid search and paid social support each other? How is remarketing structured? Is conversion tracking capturing phone calls and offline enquiries, not just form submissions?
Tools and technologies
The tools an agency uses aren’t a guarantee of quality, but they’re an indicator of how seriously they approach account management. Beyond native Google Ads, ask whether they use bid management platforms, call tracking tools, and reporting dashboards that give you real visibility into performance. Agencies managing travel accounts at scale typically use tools like Google Ads Editor for bulk management, SA360 or Optmyzr for bidding, and Looker Studio for reporting.
Understanding your budget
A good agency will give you an honest view of what your budget can realistically achieve – and will tell you if it’s insufficient for the competitive landscape you’re operating in. In travel, CPCs for high-intent destination keywords can be significant, and budget allocation needs to reflect seasonality: spending evenly throughout the year when 60% of your bookings come from January-to-March activity is a waste. Ask how the agency approaches budget pacing and seasonal reallocation, and what their process is for adjusting spend when conditions change.
Get in touch
We work exclusively with travel businesses – tour operators, ferry companies, airlines and activity providers – and have done for over ten years. If you’d like to discuss your PPC account or get a sense of what we do and how, get in touch.