For tour operators with limited budgets competing against major OTAs, negative keywords are one of the most powerful – and most underused – tools available in Google Ads. While positive keywords tell Google when to show your ads, negative keywords tell Google when not to. Getting this right means every pound of your budget is spent reaching people who could actually become customers. Getting it wrong means paying to reach people who were never going to book a tour with you.
In our experience, travel accounts that haven’t been systematically negated will typically have 15–30% of their spend going to irrelevant queries. The problem compounds during peak planning periods – when January search volume spikes and broad match keywords expand aggressively to capture rising demand, the rate of irrelevant impressions increases sharply. Getting your negative keyword lists right before those windows, not after, is what separates accounts that hit their CPA targets in peak season from those that overspend chasing volume.
Why negative keywords matter more in travel than most industries
Travel search is notoriously broad and ambiguous. A keyword like “Morocco tour” can trigger searches from people wanting to book a guided tour, people looking for free walking tour times, people researching a musician’s tour dates, or people looking for accommodation-only options. For a tour operator, only one of those intents is commercially relevant – but without negative keywords, you could be paying for clicks from all four groups. In a market where CPCs for competitive travel keywords can run £2–5+, this waste adds up to significant budget losses every month.
Building your negative keyword list: where to start
Start by mining your Search Term Reports. Go to your Google Ads account, navigate to Keywords → Search Terms, and look at every query that has generated clicks but zero conversions over the past 90 days. Common categories of irrelevant queries for tour operators include:
- Free/cheap intent: “free walking tour [destination],” “cheap holiday [destination],” “budget backpacking”
- Accommodation-only: “hotels in [destination],” “Airbnb [destination],” “self-catering [destination]”
- Flights only: “flights to [destination],” “[destination] cheap flights”
- DIY travel: “self-drive [destination],” “independent travel [destination],” “[destination] travel guide”
- Entertainment events: “[Artist name] tour,” “[destination] festival,” “live events [destination]”
- Competitor brand names: Unless you’re intentionally running competitor campaigns
Negative keyword match types and how to use them
Negative keywords work differently to positive ones – the match type logic is essentially reversed. Use negative broad match for single words you never want triggering your ads (e.g., “free,” “flights,” “hostel”). Use negative phrase match for specific combinations (e.g., “walking tour,” “self catering”) that you want to block in any query. Use negative exact match sparingly, for very specific queries you want to exclude only as that exact phrase. A common mistake is using negative exact match where phrase match is needed – accidentally leaving the door open to irrelevant variations.
Build shared negative keyword lists for account-wide efficiency
Rather than adding the same negative keywords to every campaign individually, use Google Ads’ Shared Lists feature (Tools → Shared Library → Negative keyword lists). Build a master “irrelevant travel queries” list and apply it across all campaigns. This means when you identify a new irrelevant query, one addition blocks it everywhere rather than requiring manual updates to dozens of campaigns. For tour operators with 10+ campaigns across multiple destinations, this is a significant time saver and ensures no irrelevant queries slip through in new campaigns.
Make negative keyword reviews a monthly habit
Negative keyword management isn’t a one-time setup – it’s an ongoing process. We tend to schedule a full search term review at the start of each major booking season: once in early January ahead of the summer-sun peak, and again in September ahead of winter and ski bookings. Search behaviour evolves, new irrelevant associations emerge, and broad match keywords continuously expand into new territory. A monthly 30-minute review of your Search Terms Report is one of the highest-ROI activities in travel PPC management – consistently identifying wasted spend and reallocating budget towards converting queries.
Stop paying for clicks that were never going to convert
A thorough negative keyword audit typically identifies 15–30% of tour operator Google Ads spend going to irrelevant queries. Redirecting that budget to high-intent, converting searches can dramatically improve cost per enquiry without increasing total spend. Request a free audit and we’ll show you exactly where your budget is being wasted.