How I Will Use Google Ads and SEO to Up Your Tourism Game
Online travel is big! In 2025, 70+% of all travel and tourism sales worth more than $700 billion were made online, and that figure is expected to continue to grow strongly.
Because Google is recognized as a global authority on everything connected with travel and tourism - since along with Google Organic Search, Google Search Ads and Google Display Ads its products include YouTube, Google Flights, Google Hotel Ads, metasearch, maps, travel planners, weather forecasts, Business Profiles and more - Google is a major player in getting your business or destination in front of travelers in the very crowded and competitive tourism market.
Mobile technologies extend the timeframe of Google searches throughout the research, planning, booking and in-destination phases of travel, encompassing destination choice, transportation booking, lodging booking and in-destination searches and bookings for meals, tours and attractions. More than 65% of all Google travel and tourism searches were done on mobile devices in 2025.
Why You Need Digital Tourism Marketing
Digital marketing - especially Google Ads and SEO - has so many advantages for the tourism sector as to make using it a no-brainer for anyone wanting to make money by attracting visitors:
- Digital marketing on the internet has global reach.
- Google displays your offers to people when they're actively searching for what you're selling.
- Digital marketing offers lower costs and higher returns on investment.
- Hard data are available for managing your campaigns in real time.
- Messaging can be tailored on the basis of past customer behavior.
- Interactive content can acquire data and engage users beginning with their first visit to your website.
- You can easily adjust ad spend and content according to seasonality.
Why the New England tourism market is critically important for Maine businesses and destinations
New England is home to 15.4 million people who are well educated; have high household incomes; use the internet daily; spend more on travel online than anything else; are major consumers of TV (8 Nielsen DMAs), radio, print, digital and social media; are all in a single time zone and readily reachable and segmentable on demographics and interests; and are served by Boston Logan and 6 other major international airports as well as a modern highway network on the I95 corridor that makes every local market potentially the #1 drive market for every regional destination.
The New England region of six states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island) has a land area of approximately 72,000 square miles and a population of around 15 million. Its population density of 222 persons/square mile exceeds that of 40 of the 50 US States, and is nearly three times as great as the US average population density. All of New England is within the US Eastern time zone. High population density and common time zone are advantageous for media reach, particularly geotargeting and dayparting of online advertising.
The shift which the US has undergone from a primarily manufacturing economy to a primarily service economy has benefited New England, because of its highly educated population and strong research and development, education and health-care bases. Five of the six New England states have mean per-capita incomes above the US average, and three (Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire) are among the top-10 US states for per-capita income.
New Englanders, with their high household incomes, tend to be tolerant of high travel costs. Travel is by far the most prevalent type of product bought online by New Englanders. New England has high internet penetration and broadband access (97.6% coverage in Connecticut, 96.8% in New Hampshire) with 87% of consumers region-wide subscribing to streaming services.
Boston's Logan International Airport is the primary airline gateway to New England, with 40+ airlines providing connections to more than 100 domestic and international destinations. Logan served a record 43+ million passengers in 2025, projected to increase to 53.5M by 2035.
New England destinations are heavily dependent on drive-market tourism. Visitors traveling from within New England - particularly Massachusetts - and neighboring NY, NJ and PA make up more than 77% of trips taken by Americans to New England destinations. All parts of New England are connected by modern highway networks that make each local market area potentially the #1 drive market for every regional destination. Interstate 95 runs 566 miles through the 5 coastal New England states from Greenwich, CT to Houlton,ME where it enters Canada at Woodstock, NB.
Why you should work with us
- We're New England inbound/outbound specialists who understand the tourism business and talk your language.
- We have a local presence on the ground - and extensive contacts with business, media and government - in Boothbay Harbor and throughout the State of Maine along with Boston, Massachusetts, the gateway to all of New England.
- You'll get the benefit of our 20+ years of business strategy, marketing and advertising experience in New England tourism.
- The work we'll do for you will get you more and better-qualified website traffic, more conversions, more leads, more bookings, bigger sales, and higher return from your online investment.
- You'll get personal, professional attention - and traditional New England integrity and quality - from experienced, top-level New England people.
- And all our work is covered by an unconditional money-back guarantee.
How Our Google Campaigns Work
Using sponsored search with Google Ads, I'll place your text ads prominently on Google's search-return pages. Depending on your marketing and business goals, I can also place display ads on relevant pages of Google partner content sites with high traffic. You pay Google nothing for search ad impressions (views); only for incremental visits to your website that occur when someone clicks through from your Google Ad to a landing page on your site.
I'll set your average daily click budget at level that works for you, help you select the most relevant keywords, create your ad groups and ads, and provide ongoing bid-management and campaign adjustment services, to maximize results for your media budget. For those ad campaign management services, you'll pay me a modest flat monthly fee to be agreed on up front.
Please note that for a campaign of any size, unlike in the traditional agency model in which the management fee is charged as a percentage of your media spend, my management fee stays the same regardless of how much you spend with Google. That way I'll have no incentive to spend more of your money on Google click charges - rather, simply to satisfy you with the results the campaign produces.
The Google Ads and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I will do for your website will make your web pages prominent in Google Search on the user queries that are most important to your business - making your sales-driving content easier for your best prospects and customers to find and understand.
You need to hire me to run your Google campaigns because I have the necessary specialized technical and sales skills and specific knowledge of Google products that are necessary to hit the ground running with both organic and paid search. You run and grow your business, I'll do the marketing, and we'll both make money.
Ready to start making more money now? Most tourism search marketing campaigns need an investment of just a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month. In 2024 with inflation at a 40-year high, Google Ads produced a mean ROI of 200% across all industry sectors. Follow this link to tell me a bit about your business and your strategic objectives and Book a FREE Online Marketing Audit!
Google makes a wealth of up-to-date tourism data available to suppliers: trends in consumer travel attitudes and intentions, airline routes and delays, traffic congestion, weather and political events and more:
Here are some key Google Search statistics that underline how critical the Google advertising platform is to travel and tourism businesses:
- Between Google Search and the Google Ads services, Google delivered more than 64% of all US website traffic last year.
- 93% of all web browsing sessions and 89% of all online travel and tourism sales begin with a search, and 92% of those searches are done using Google, including 96% of all searches done on mobile phones.
- However: Fewer than 1% of Google users click on anything beyond Page 1 of search returns - which is why you need my professional, affordable Google search and advertising services.
SEO Audit: I will analyze your website and provide a comprehensive report with specific, actionable recommendations for website changes that will get more converting traffic, acquire new customers, generate higher-quality leads, make more and bigger sales, and enhance the legitimacy and reputation of your brand. Go here for more information about my SEO Audits.
- Across all industry segments, 98% of companies using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising use Google Ads.
- Tourism ads get clicked on a lot: In 2025, the average Google Ads clickthrough rate in travel and tourism was 4.68%.
- Tourism ads are reasonably priced: The current (2026) average cost per click for Google Ads tourism ads ranges from $1.05 to $2.12 - up from 2025 because of inflation, but still a bargain compared with the all-sector mean of $2.69.
- Tourism ads convert lookers to bookers: The average conversion rate of Google Ads tourism ads is 3.55%.
- Tourism ads acquire leads at competitive prices: The average cost of a lead from a Google Ads tourism ad is ranging from$30 to $60 vs. an all-sector mean of around $70.
So now maybe you're thinking: “I understand that Google is a big player in tourism, but should I spend money on optimization for Google Search, or pay for clickthroughs from Google Ads?”
The correct answer to that question is: Do both Google Search and Google Ads, because synergies between the two make the value of the combined whole greater than the sum of the two parts:
- High visibility in Google Search enhances trust and authenticity of your business in the minds of searchers.
- Content about your website appearing in both Google organic search returns and Google Ads reinforces the well-known and trustworthy image of your business.
- Trusted businesses get more traffic, more new potential customers.
- Prospects who trust your business will be more likely to subscribe to your email list, providing you with ongoing marketing opportunities.
- Traffic coming to your website from optimized Google organic listings or from Google Ads will stay on site longer, visit more pages, and convert better than other traffic.
Some of My Most Popular Blog Posts About Tourism Marketing
How to add an image sitemap to your website for Google Google believes that having lots of relevant images on a website contributes to a great user experience. Creating an XML image sitemap helps Google find all the images on your website.
How to use browser caching to make your website load faster Shorter page loading times provide the user with a better experience of your website and make Google happy.
New/improved Google PageSpeed Insights includes Performance Score, real-world Field Data, Lab Data The latest free Google PageSpeed Insights tool provides lots of actionable information you can use to speed up loading of your pages
Enhance website engagement by avoiding the ‘Illusion of Completeness’ Users will only scroll down if they believe there's useful information farther down the page.
Speed up website loading with WebP images WebP is a modern image format developed by Google that provides superior compression and smaller file sizes which make for faster page loading.
Max Starkov: Impactful marketing strategies for independent hotels OTA marketing spend per property averages only $250/month, and there are plenty of things hotel owners can do for $250/month to increase online visibility and get people to book directly.
How Google says to improve the mobile loading time of Connecticut tourism website CTVISIT.COM At the time of writing the home page of CTVISIT.COM tool 16 seconds to load with a resultant 33% loss of visitors who didn't want to wait.
54% of US Black travelers are more likely to visit a destination that has Black representation in its travel ads US Black travelers spend more than $100 billion on domestic leisure travel annually, more than $20M on international travel,
OTAs rush to add AI chatbots for trip planning Booking.com, Expedia and Tripadvisor have all added AI chatbot functionality - but 81% of travelers prefer to use Google to find a place to stay.
Risk-free 30-day trial and Money-Back Guarantee: if after one month you're not totally satisfied, I'll return 100% of my fees.
Ready to start making more money now? Most Google search marketing campaigns need an investment of just a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month. In 2024 with inflation at a 40-year high, Google Ads produced a mean ROI of 200% across all industry sectors. Follow this link to tell me a bit about your business and your strategic objectives and Book a FREE Online Marketing Audit!
David H. Boggs, MS