Campaign structure is where travel PPC either becomes manageable or descends into chaos — and in our experience, most tour operator accounts we audit are structured around what was convenient to set up, not around how travellers actually search.
A poorly structured account doesn’t just create reporting headaches. It means your budget isn’t being allocated where it should be, your Quality Scores suffer because ad groups are too broad, and you lose the ability to bid differently on booking-intent traffic versus early-research traffic. Getting the structure right from the start — or taking the time to rebuild it — pays dividends across every other part of the account.
What do we mean by account structure?
Your account structure is the hierarchy of campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads that determines how Google spends your budget and when your ads appear. The structure also determines how easy it is to analyse performance and make decisions — a well-structured account tells you immediately which destinations are driving bookings and at what cost; a poorly structured one requires significant data digging before you can act.
The fundamental structure decision for a tour operator is: do you organise primarily by destination, by product type, or by search intent? In most cases, we recommend destination-first at the campaign level (Kenya, Peru, Japan), with ad groups breaking down by product type within that (safaris, family tours, self-drive). This mirrors how travellers search — destination first, experience type second — and keeps your Quality Scores high because ads, keywords, and landing pages stay tightly aligned.
How do you know how to organise your campaigns?
The right structure for your account depends on your product range, your budget, and what you most need to measure. A few key considerations:
- Brand vs. non-brand: These should always be separate campaigns. Your brand campaign (people searching your company name) will have much higher CTRs and lower CPCs than non-brand. Mixing them inflates your headline numbers and hides the true cost of acquiring new-to-you customers. Also — run a brand campaign even if your organic listing is strong. Competitors and OTAs are very likely bidding on your brand name.
- Destination campaigns: Separate campaigns per key destination allow you to set destination-specific budgets aligned to your seasonal demand. Your Kenya campaign should be funded more heavily in January (when UK travellers research East Africa for summer) than in August.
- Intent layers: Within each destination campaign, segment ad groups by intent stage where budget allows — broad destination terms in one group, specific tour type terms in another, high-intent “book now” terms in a third. This lets you bid more aggressively on the traffic closest to conversion.
- Remarketing: Keep remarketing campaigns structurally separate from prospecting. They’re talking to different audiences with different messages, and blending them makes optimisation much harder.
What are the benefits of a well-formed structure?
Beyond the operational benefits, a well-structured account produces better results for a specific reason: it gives Google’s algorithms cleaner signals to work with. When keywords, ad copy, and landing pages are tightly aligned within an ad group, Quality Scores improve, which means lower CPCs and better ad positions for the same budget. In a competitive travel category where you’re bidding against OTAs with enormous budgets, every Quality Score point matters.
- Budgeting and optimisation: Separate campaigns mean you can shift budget between destinations based on seasonal demand — increasing Kenya budget in January, pulling back in low-season months, and reallocating to ski and winter sun in Q4.
- Ad copy relevance: Tightly themed ad groups mean your copy can be genuinely specific to the search — which improves both CTR and conversion rate. “Small Group Kenya Safari Specialists” is a better ad for a “Kenya small group safari” search than any generic travel ad could be.
- Clear reporting: When campaigns are structured logically, performance data maps directly to business questions. You can answer “which destinations are driving bookings at what cost?” without complex data manipulation.
Components of your account structure
- Ad groups: Each ad group should represent a tight, coherent theme — ideally a specific destination + tour type combination. “Kenya Safaris,” “Kenya Family Tours,” and “Kenya Self-Drive” are three separate ad groups, not one. The tighter the theme, the more relevant your ads and the better your Quality Score.
- Keywords: In travel, match type strategy matters enormously. Broad match has become more aggressive in recent years — it will serve your ads on related searches that you haven’t explicitly targeted, which can be efficient or catastrophic depending on your account’s conversion data. Exact and phrase match give more control; broad match gives more scale. The right balance depends on your budget and how mature your conversion data is.
- Negative keywords: Essential in travel. “Morocco tour” without negative keywords will attract searches for musicians’ tour dates, free walking tours, and accommodation-only queries. A well-maintained negative keyword list is one of the highest-ROI maintenance tasks in travel PPC account management.
- Landing pages: The landing page should match the ad group as closely as your site architecture allows. An ad for “small group Kenya safari” should land on your Kenya safari page, not your Africa homepage. Every step removed from the specific thing the ad promised increases bounce rate.
Our final top tips
- Structure around how your customers search, not around how your product catalogue is organised internally.
- Always separate brand from non-brand campaigns — and always run a brand campaign.
- Map your campaign budget allocation to your booking calendar, not to equal monthly splits.
- Build your negative keyword list before you launch, not after you’ve spent budget on irrelevant traffic.
- Review your structure whenever you add a new destination or product — don’t squeeze new products into existing ad groups as a shortcut.
- Name campaigns clearly and consistently — you’ll thank yourself when you’re reviewing performance at 7am the day after a peak booking window.
If you’d like us to review the structure of your existing Google Ads account, or help you build one from scratch, get in touch with the team. Account structure audits are one of the most consistently high-value things we do for new clients.