Ads for Visitors Still Planning at Home

The guests are still at home

A wilderness lodge or a kayak tour company fills its summer with guests from Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Seattle. They book from home, weeks or months before the trip.

Its AdWords campaign was set up as a plumber's would be: ads only for people physically within 30 kilometres. They are mostly locals, and visitors who arrived with a bed already booked.

A tourism business needs the opposite arrangement: ads in front of people who are somewhere else, thinking about coming.

Two ways to aim by place

AdWords decides location in two ways: where a person is, judged from their connection or phone, and which places they show interest in, such as a town named in a search.

A campaign can use either or both; both is the default. A local trade often chooses physical presence alone, and a tourism business copying that setup hides itself from everyone still at home.

Facebook works differently. Its ads are aimed by the city or region people live in, narrowed by age and by interests such as camping, hiking or fishing.

The location settings to choose

A campaign for planners usually combines several of these settings:

• Target the destination with the option for people searching for or showing interest in it, so a search in Calgary naming the lake can show the ad.
• Target the home cities of past guests with the option for people physically there, paired with keywords about the area.
• Use keywords that name the place, since a search for cabin rentals alone says nothing about where.
• Run separate campaigns for planners and for people already nearby, so each has its own budget and message.
• Aim Facebook ads at the cities guests come from, narrowed by relevant interests.

The second suits a business whose guests come from a few known cities. The first catches people anywhere who are already thinking about the area by name.

Where your guests come from

Booking records already hold the answer: each guest's home city, the date they booked and the date they stayed. A season's worth is enough to see the pattern.

Google Analytics shows the cities visitors browse from, in the location report under Audience. Compare it with the bookings, since browsing and booking do not always come from the same places.

Pick the handful of cities that send real guests, and leave the rest of the world out until the budget allows.

When in the year to run them

The gap between booking and staying is what matters. If summer guests book in February and March, ads in July reach them after they have decided.

Different cities may plan on different calendars. Spring break and some long weekends do not fall on the same dates in every province, and families plan around them.

Run the planners' campaigns in the booking months, with a smaller campaign near the property in season for travellers deciding on the day.

Ads written for someone far away

An ad seen in Calgary should say what a local ad never needs to: how far, how to get there, and what makes the trip worth it. Name the lake or the valley.

For visitors from Washington, say that prices are in Canadian dollars. On Facebook, show the place in the season the ad is selling, not a winter scene for a summer stay.

A worked example

A yurt rental on forested acreage in the West Kootenay has six yurts with wood stoves and decks, a shared bath house and a trail to the lake. It opens from May to October.

Its campaign showed ads only to people within 50 kilometres, using keywords like yurt rental and glamping.

The booking records told a different story. Most guests lived in Calgary, Edmonton or Vancouver, and booked between January and April for July and August.

There are now two campaigns for planners. One targets the area by interest, with keywords naming the lake and valley; the other targets Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver by presence, with keywords about yurts and the region.

Facebook ads reach people in those cities interested in camping and hiking, from January to April. A small campaign near the property runs in summer for last-minute stays.

The page the ads lead to gives drive times from each city, what a yurt includes, prices in Canadian dollars, an availability calendar and the cancellation policy.

What the page has to answer

Someone booking from far away cannot drop by to look. The page has to answer what a visit would: what the place is like, what is included and what it costs.

Give drive times from the main cities, notes on ferries or mountain passes, the nearest airport, and what the weather and the lake are like in each month of the season.

Put availability, prices with taxes and the cancellation policy on the same page as the booking button. A planner comparing three places will not hunt for them.

Judging a campaign for planners

Track booking requests from the ads as conversions, so each campaign is judged by enquiries rather than clicks. Separate campaigns make it plain which settings bring real guests.

Allow for the delay. A family that clicks in February may book in March after talking it over, so a quiet first week says little about the campaign.

The counter-case

Some tourism businesses live on people already in town: a cafe on the main street, a bike rental at the trailhead, a boat tour sold on the dock that morning.

For them, ads shown to people physically nearby, on phones, are the right setup, and the local trade's settings fit.

Many need both, in separate campaigns with separate budgets. What fails is one campaign built for locals and expected to reach people who have not yet left home.

Setting up the campaign for planners

1. Pull home cities and booking dates from past reservations.
2. Choose the cities that send real guests.
3. Target the destination by interest, with place names in keywords.
4. Target home cities by physical presence.
5. Schedule the ads for the booking months.
6. Build the page that answers a distant planner.
7. Track booking requests as conversions.

Step one decides everything else. The gap between booking date and stay date tells you when to advertise, and the home cities tell you where.

A local trade has the opposite worry, a new campaign reaching far beyond its area, and the free AdWords credit that came in the mail explains which settings rein it in.

Frequently asked questions

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