What is PPC?
PPC puts your travel brand in front of people actively searching for what you offer – across paid search, display, shopping, YouTube and remarketing.
PPC covers a range of paid advertising formats, each suited to different stages of the travel booking journey. From capturing high-intent search queries like “luxury safari holidays” or “ski chalets Val d’Isère” through to retargeting visitors who browsed your site but didn’t book – PPC gives travel brands precise control over who sees their ads, when, and at what cost.
The main PPC formats used by travel businesses are:
Paid search is where PPC delivers some of its strongest results for travel businesses. When someone searches for “Maldives holidays” or “family resorts in Majorca”, they have intent – they’re actively looking. Paid search puts your brand in front of those people at exactly the right moment.
For travel, this means bidding on the destination, product, and price-point keywords that match what you sell. A well-structured account separates brand terms from non-brand, uses match types intelligently, and continuously refines negatives so budget isn’t wasted on irrelevant traffic. The result is highly targeted traffic from people who are ready to enquire or book.
Paid search is also useful for protecting your brand in competitive markets – ensuring that when someone searches for you by name, your ad appears rather than a competitor or OTA undercutting you.
Google Shopping Ads are particularly relevant for travel businesses selling specific products – such as travel accessories, luggage, insurance, or accommodation packages. Ads appear alongside product images, prices and titles directly in search results, making them ideal for retailers with a defined product inventory.
For tour operators and package holiday providers, shopping-style campaigns can be run through Google’s Travel Ads products, displaying destination, price and availability information directly in search. Getting the feed right is critical – the more complete and accurate your product data, the better Google can match your ads to relevant searches and deliver a stronger return.
Display and programmatic advertising allows travel brands to reach potential customers while they’re browsing the web – whether that’s reading travel content, checking the weather in a destination, or researching activities. Unlike paid search, display works higher up the funnel, building awareness and keeping your brand visible throughout the longer travel consideration period.
The real power of display for travel is the targeting. You can reach audiences based on their travel interests, recent search behaviour, the types of destinations they’ve been researching, and their income bracket. Programmatic platforms take this further, using data to find and reach people who match your ideal customer profile at scale – across thousands of websites, apps and placements.
Travel has one of the highest basket abandonment rates of any sector – it’s not unusual for 80–90% of visitors to leave without booking. Remarketing lets you re-engage those people with targeted ads after they’ve left your site.
For travel, this is especially powerful because the consideration period is long. Someone who browsed safari holidays on your site last week is still in the market – they just haven’t decided yet. Remarketing keeps your brand in front of them while they continue their research, and well-timed ads with relevant messaging can be the nudge that brings them back to book.
Effective travel remarketing segments audiences by the products or destinations they viewed, how recently they visited, and where they dropped off in the booking journey – so messaging can be tailored accordingly rather than showing everyone the same generic ad.
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and for travel brands it’s a significant opportunity. People search YouTube for destination inspiration, travel vlogs, “best time to visit” guides and property tours. Well-placed video ads can reach audiences at the exact moment they’re thinking about where to go next.
YouTube ads are particularly effective for travel brands with strong visual product – showing a destination, resort or experience through video creates emotional impact that text ads can’t match. Ads can be targeted by interest, search behaviour, channel type or even specific videos, making it possible to reach people actively researching travel rather than a broad general audience.
PPC works best when it’s managed as a connected strategy rather than a collection of separate campaigns. For travel businesses, that means making sure your paid search, display, remarketing and social campaigns are working together – not competing for the same audience or duplicating effort.
Key areas that often make the biggest difference to PPC performance in travel include: keyword strategy and match type management, bid strategies aligned to actual booking value, ad scheduling around peak search periods, landing page quality, and how well your tracking is set up to capture the full customer journey. Getting these right means your budget works harder and you have clear visibility of what’s actually driving revenue.
Summon works exclusively with travel brands on PPC. Whether you want to understand how PPC could work for your business, get an independent audit of your existing accounts, or are looking for an agency to manage your PPC, we are here to help.
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