It’s one of the questions we get asked most: which Google Ads bidding strategy should I be using? The honest answer is that there’s no single right answer — but there is a wrong way to approach it, and we see it constantly in travel accounts. Tour operators and activity providers often jump straight into Smart Bidding before their campaigns have the data to make it work. The result is unstable CPAs, erratic impression share, and a lot of wasted budget during the periods that matter most.
Bidding strategies in Google Ads fall into three broad categories: Smart Bidding (target-based, machine-driven), automated bidding (volume-based), and manual. Each has its place — the key is matching the strategy to where your account actually is, not where you’d like it to be. We’re going to walk through the most common strategies using the same framework throughout:
- Objective
- Function
- Pros and cons
By the end, you should have a clearer view of what fits your current setup — whether you’re running a single destination tour campaign or managing a full multi-product, multi-season Google Ads account.
Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Objective
Spend your daily budget while driving as many conversions as possible at or below your target CPA.
Function
Google’s algorithm adjusts bids in real time to hit your target CPA across all auctions. It doesn’t differentiate between high-value and low-value conversions — it simply optimises toward the conversion action you’ve defined, at the cost you’ve set.
This creates an important distinction for travel. If you’re tracking enquiry form submissions as your conversion, tCPA is optimising toward the cost of generating an enquiry — not the cost of a booking. For a tour operator where a single confirmed departure might be worth £3,000–£10,000, conflating enquiry CPA with booking CPA can badly distort your bidding logic. What we’d recommend: set your tCPA based on your actual enquiry-to-booking conversion rate and average booking value, then work backwards.
There’s also a data dependency that catches a lot of accounts out. Target CPA requires meaningful conversion volume to function — Google’s own guidance points to roughly 30–50 conversions per month at the campaign level, though we tend to see reliable performance only once you’re consistently above that threshold. For smaller tour operators running one or two active campaigns with modest search volume, that number can take months to accumulate, particularly outside peak booking windows.
Pros
- Highly effective once conversion data is established — accounts with strong historical volume often see significant efficiency gains
- Reduces the need for constant manual bid management, useful during busy operational periods
- Works well for accounts with stable, predictable conversion patterns — such as operators with year-round departures or consistent enquiry volumes
Cons
- Unreliable in low-volume accounts — if you’re getting fewer than 30 conversions per month, the algorithm doesn’t have enough signal to bid accurately
- Doesn’t account for booking value — a £500 short break and a £5,000 escorted tour generate the same signal if both result in a form submission
- Can struggle during seasonal shifts — when enquiry patterns change sharply (as they do between January’s summer-sun rush and quieter mid-year periods), the algorithm can lag behind
- A poorly set tCPA can cause campaigns to throttle significantly or stop serving altogether
Target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Objective
Maximise conversion value while achieving a target return on ad spend — expressed as a percentage (e.g. 400% tROAS means £4 of revenue for every £1 spent).
Function
Instead of optimising toward a fixed cost per conversion, tROAS tells the algorithm to prioritise higher-value conversions. It adjusts bids based on the predicted value of each auction, not just the likelihood of a conversion.
For tROAS to work, you need to be passing conversion values to Google — and this is where things get complicated for tour operators. If your product range spans self-guided day walks at £80 per person and fully guided 14-day expeditions at £4,500 per person, you need dynamic conversion values that reflect actual booking revenue, not a static assumed value. In our experience, operators who use a fixed conversion value get very little benefit from tROAS over tCPA — the algorithm is optimising toward a signal that doesn’t actually reflect value differentiation.
Done properly — with real transaction values passed via Google Tag Manager on the booking confirmation page — tROAS can genuinely shift budget toward your highest-margin products. But the setup complexity is real, and it requires a working ecommerce or near-ecommerce conversion setup, which many tour operators don’t yet have.
Pros
- Genuinely optimises toward revenue, not just volume — the right tool once conversion value tracking is in place
- Can automatically shift spend toward higher-value products during peak booking periods
- Ideal for operators with a diverse, variable-value product range who have the tracking infrastructure to support it
Cons
- Requires accurate, dynamic conversion value data — without it, you’re optimising toward noise
- Needs even more conversion volume than tCPA to function reliably (typically 50+ per month)
- Complex to set up correctly for operators with enquiry-based rather than direct-book sales flows
- Can under-serve campaigns for lower-priced products even when they’re profitable
Maximise Clicks
Objective
Drive as many clicks as possible within your set daily budget.
Function
Google adjusts bids automatically to get the maximum number of clicks your budget allows. There’s no conversion signal involved — the algorithm simply prioritises cheaper clicks to maximise volume.
We occasionally use Maximise Clicks in specific situations: new campaign launches where there’s no conversion history yet, or brand new destination pages where the goal is initial data collection rather than direct enquiry. It can also be useful for operators launching into a new market — say a UK-based operator adding US-targeted campaigns — where you need clicks and impression data before optimising further. What we’d caution against is leaving accounts on Maximise Clicks beyond that initial learning phase. Without conversion signals, budget gravitates toward the cheapest clicks, not the most valuable ones.
Pros
- Good for generating initial traffic and data in brand new campaigns
- Simple to set up and understand
- Useful for destination awareness campaigns where clicks and reach are the primary KPI
Cons
- No conversion optimisation — volume without quality
- Budget often moves toward cheaper, lower-intent keywords
- Not suitable for mature campaigns where enquiry or booking efficiency is the goal
- Can generate misleading performance data if left running too long before switching to a conversion-based strategy
Maximise Conversions
Objective
Get as many conversions as possible within your daily budget, without a specific CPA target.
Function
Similar to tCPA, but without a cost constraint — the algorithm spends your full budget to maximise conversion volume regardless of what each one costs. This makes it an effective bridge strategy: accounts that don’t yet have enough data for tCPA can use Maximise Conversions to accumulate signal while still driving performance.
What we’ve found works well is using Maximise Conversions as a stepping stone — running it for 4–8 weeks until you’ve built up enough conversion history, then transitioning to tCPA with a target informed by the actual CPA data you’ve gathered. This is particularly relevant for operators with seasonal campaigns that go quiet for months and then relaunch — rather than inheriting stale tCPA targets, starting fresh with Maximise Conversions gives the algorithm room to relearn quickly.
Pros
- Effective bridge strategy before moving to tCPA
- Good for relaunching dormant campaigns after a seasonal pause
- Spends full budget, which can accelerate the data-gathering phase
Cons
- No cost control — CPA can spike significantly, particularly in competitive travel verticals
- Without a tCPA guardrail, spend efficiency can suffer during high-demand periods when auction prices rise
- Requires budget headroom — not ideal if you’re managing a tight monthly cap
Target Impression Share
Objective
Achieve a defined impression share in your chosen position (absolute top, top of page, or anywhere on page) within your budget.
Function
You set a target percentage and a preferred position, and Google adjusts bids to hit that impression share goal. The algorithm prioritises visibility over cost efficiency — it will bid aggressively to maintain your share of auctions.
The most common application we see in travel accounts is brand term campaigns. For branded keywords, impression share is often more important than CPA — you want to own your brand name in search results, especially given the OTA habit of bidding on tour operator brand terms. Target Impression Share on brand campaigns at absolute top can effectively put them on autopilot, freeing you to focus budget management attention on non-brand performance campaigns.
Pros
- Ideal for brand campaigns where consistent visibility is the goal
- Good for protecting branded search real estate against OTA bidding
- Reduces manual bid adjustments for brand and awareness campaigns
Cons
- Optimises for visibility, not efficiency — costs can rise significantly to hit impression share targets
- Risk of bidding beyond profitability if targets are set too high on competitive non-brand terms
- Keyword and targeting accuracy matters — poor match types can inflate impressions without delivering useful traffic
Which strategy is the best?
The one that fits where your account actually is — not where you’d like it to be.
In our experience, tour operator accounts tend to fall into one of two situations. Either they have strong conversion volume and good tracking in place — in which case tCPA or tROAS (if conversion values are properly set up) will outperform manual approaches. Or they’re running lower-volume campaigns, perhaps for specialist or niche departures, where Smart Bidding is making decisions with too little data and the account would be better served by Enhanced CPC or manual bidding with tighter human oversight.
Clients often ask us whether they should switch to Smart Bidding as soon as possible. Our answer: only when the data justifies it. A tCPA strategy running on 10 conversions a month is not Smart Bidding — it’s guesswork with a Google logo on it. Build the conversion volume first. Manual CPC or Enhanced CPC during that phase isn’t a fallback — it’s the right call.
Seasonality adds another layer of complexity for travel. The conversion patterns in January (peak summer-sun booking research) look nothing like July, and Smart Bidding strategies calibrated for one period can underperform significantly when demand shifts. We’d always recommend reviewing bidding strategies at the start of each major booking season, and keeping a close eye on tCPA performance during seasonal transitions rather than assuming the algorithm will adapt quickly enough on its own.
If you’d like to review your current bidding setup or talk through what makes sense for your campaigns, get in touch — we work with tour operators, ferry companies, airlines and activity providers across the full paid media mix.