Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs) are one of the most effective tools available in travel PPC – and one of the most underused. The reason they work so well in this sector is directly related to how travellers research and book. Someone who visited your Patagonia trekking page three weeks ago and is back searching “guided Patagonia tours” is fundamentally different from a cold searcher using the same query. RLSAs let you treat them differently: different bid adjustment, different ad copy, different CTA.
How is RLSA different from display remarketing?
Display remarketing shows ads to previous visitors as they browse other websites. RLSAs are different – they apply audience lists to your search campaigns, modifying how your ads behave when a known visitor performs a Google search. There’s no passive ad placement involved; the audience signal only activates when that user is actively searching, which means you’re reaching people at a moment of high intent rather than interrupting them mid-browse.
For tour operators with long booking windows – often 3–12 months between first research and final booking – this distinction matters enormously. Your RLSA audiences accumulate visitors who showed genuine interest weeks or months ago and are now back in an active search phase. That’s a valuable signal that you can act on.
What are the benefits of using RLSAs?
The core benefit is targeting efficiency. Rather than competing in every auction at the same bid level, you can concentrate spend on users most likely to convert – and pull back on or exclude users for whom further spend is unlikely to be productive. In practice, we tend to see RLSA bid adjustments produce more enquiries at a lower CPA than the equivalent spend targeting cold audiences, particularly during peak booking windows when competition drives CPCs up across the board.
Using RLSA to upsell to previously converted visitors
For tour operators who see repeat customers, RLSAs offer a targeted way to reach past bookers who are back in research mode. A past guest who trekked with you in Nepal and is now searching “Tibet tour operator” or “Bhutan escorted tour” is an ideal upsell audience – they already know your brand and trust your product. You can build a separate campaign targeting this past-customer list with ad copy that acknowledges the existing relationship: “Welcome Back – New Himalayan Departures for 2025” will outperform generic acquisition copy for this audience.
Exclude past customers from your PPC campaigns
Not all operators benefit from targeting past customers – particularly those selling bucket-list, once-in-a-lifetime trips where repeat bookings are rare. If someone has already completed a multi-week expedition with you, spending budget reaching them again via generic acquisition campaigns is likely wasted. Building an exclusion list of confirmed bookers from your CRM and applying it to your main acquisition campaigns ensures that budget is directed toward genuinely new prospects.
Make bid adjustments depending on your RLSA audience list
Different audience segments justify different bid adjustments. Someone who viewed a specific tour itinerary and checked pricing – a strong intent signal – warrants a positive bid adjustment of 20–50% to ensure your ad wins the auction when they return. Someone who visited your homepage briefly and bounced warrants a much smaller adjustment, if any. Structuring your RLSA adjustments around the depth and recency of engagement gives you a much more precise bidding strategy than a single blanket adjustment applied to all site visitors.
Customise your ad copy
The most impactful use of RLSAs in travel is combining bid adjustments with tailored ad copy. A returning visitor who previously looked at your October Morocco departure needs different messaging than a cold searcher: they don’t need to be told what the trip involves – they need a reason to act now. Copy that acknowledges proximity to booking (“October Places Filling – Only 3 Remaining”) or removes friction (“Flexible Cancellation Up to 8 Weeks Before”) will perform better with this audience than acquisition copy designed for first-time exposure.
What next?
RLSAs reward operators who have thought carefully about their audience segments and booking journey. The basics – one list of all site visitors with a blanket bid uplift – are easy to implement and provide some benefit. The real value comes from building a layered audience architecture that reflects how your customers actually move through the research and decision process. If you’d like to review your current remarketing setup, get in touch.