A click today may be a booking in six months. Treating a travel or venue account like a same-session shop makes good demand look unprofitable.
The conversion date is not the decision date.
E-commerce gets an unfair advantage
In a typical online shop, the ad click, order and revenue can arrive in the same session. Travel and leisure businesses often ask for a decision across days or months. A family researches in January, enquires in February and books after payday in March. A venue visitor clicks on a rainy Tuesday, waits for the group chat and books when the date is agreed.
If the dashboard judges every click by same-day revenue, it will overvalue impulse products and undervalue considered demand. The result is a quiet form of self-sabotage: cutting the campaigns that create future bookings, then wondering why branded demand falls later.
Replace one KPI with a chain of signals
Keep revenue and return on ad spend, but place them in a chain that reflects how the customer moves. A useful chain is qualified destination or activity view, availability check, enquiry or call, booking, gross value, contribution and repeat value.
Each signal should have a job. Early-stage content shows whether a promise attracts the right person. An availability check shows intent with a date. A call may be the best conversion for a complex itinerary. A completed booking is the commercial outcome, but it may arrive long after the ad did its work.
Report by booking cohort
Group customers by the week they first clicked or enquired, then watch how that cohort books over 30, 60 and 90 days. Use an illustrative window that matches your actual business; a ski holiday operator may need a longer view than an escape room.
Separate demand creation from demand capture
Brand and exact itinerary searches capture existing intent. Destination discovery, guides and broader category searches may create or shape it. Neither is “better” in isolation, but they should not carry the same expectation for immediate ROAS.
Bring offline behaviour back in
Import phone bookings, walk-ins, event tickets or season pass purchases where possible. A lead that becomes a £900 family booking is not the same as a form that never gets answered.
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A useful weekly view might show spend, qualified sessions, booking rate, average booking value, days-to-book, cancellation rate and contribution by campaign. Add notes for capacity, weather, price changes and availability. Without that context, a falling conversion rate could mean the venue is full, not that the ads stopped working.
Set guardrails rather than pretending to know the perfect target. For example: protect campaigns with healthy 90-day contribution, pause search terms that generate low-quality enquiries, and shift budget when the next bookable inventory changes.
The clear take
Judge travel and leisure media on the time it takes customers to decide, not the time it takes a platform to report. The right KPI system makes delayed value visible and gives you permission to invest in demand before it becomes a branded search.
This is not an excuse to keep weak campaigns running forever. Set a review date, define the leading signals that should move and decide what evidence would make you cut or scale. A longer booking window needs a better feedback loop, not an absence of accountability.
Keep the thinking connected: PPC for travel companies & tour operators or explore the related service.