Performance Max can work for a tour operator, but only when it is set up as a supporting campaign rather than the first one you launch. It is Google’s goal-based campaign type that serves your ads across Google channels from a single campaign, using the assets you supply. For tours and hotels with a clear booking conversion and a few months of data, it can add bookings that search campaigns miss. For a new account with no tracking, it tends to spend money without telling you where it went.
This guide explains how Performance Max behaves, what a tour operator needs in place before trying it, how to structure the asset groups, and which controls to use to keep spend on real demand. It builds on our starter campaign structure for tour operators, which we would still launch first.
What Performance Max is, in plain terms
Google’s own help pages describe Performance Max campaigns as a way to reach customers across Google’s channels from one campaign. You provide creative assets such as images, videos, headlines and descriptions, along with a budget and a conversion goal, and Google decides where each ad appears and in which combination. Those surfaces include Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and Discover.
The trade-off is control. In a search campaign you choose keywords and see which queries triggered your ads. In Performance Max you steer through signals and controls, and you see less of the detail. That is acceptable when you know what a booking is worth and the conversion tracking is reliable. It is a problem when you do not.
Performance Max follows the conversion data you give it. If the account counts the wrong actions as conversions, it will efficiently find more of the wrong thing.
Before you start: the four things that must be true
We would not switch Performance Max on for a tour business until these four conditions hold.
- Bookings are tracked as conversions. The conversion should be a completed booking with its value, not a click on the Book now button. If your booking engine sits on another domain, check that the confirmation event reaches your analytics and ad accounts. We touch on this in our piece on the tour booking flow on mobile.
- A search campaign already runs. A search campaign tells you which queries convert and which words to exclude. Performance Max then has something to learn from and something to be compared against.
- The landing pages are good. Each product or tour should have a page that loads quickly on a phone, shows the price and gets to the booking in few steps.
- The budget is large enough to learn. A very small daily budget makes it hard to gather conversions. If you only have a small test budget, put it into search first.
Why tour operators should be careful with it
Tourism has features that make automated campaigns trickier than they look in a retail case study. Demand is seasonal, so last month’s conversion rate may say little about next month. Many guests research for weeks and book on a different device. Average order values vary widely between a 40 euro walking tour and a 2,000 euro multi-day package. And an automated campaign tends to find the easiest conversions first, which are often people who already know your name.
That last point deserves its own heading.
The brand traffic problem
If Performance Max shows ads to people who searched for your company name, it will report those bookings as wins, and your return on ad spend will look excellent. Those guests would probably have booked anyway through an unpaid result or your brand search campaign. This is the single most common reason a Performance Max campaign looks better than it is.
Google provides the tools to manage this. Its help pages list campaign-level controls that include negative keywords and brand exclusions, plus search themes, keywordless targeting and final URL expansion. Use brand exclusions and negative keywords to keep the campaign away from your own brand terms, and handle brand demand in a separate, cheap search campaign where you can see it. If you want to bid on competitor or marketplace names, we explain the trade-offs in our guide on OTA commissions and direct bookings.
How Google decides between search and Performance Max
This matters when you run both. According to Google’s help page, search campaigns containing an exact match keyword are prioritised over Performance Max when a query hits that exact match keyword, and search themes carry the same priority as phrase and broad match keywords. In practice, that means your tightly controlled search campaign keeps the queries it targets exactly, and Performance Max picks up the wider demand around it.
It also means your exact match keywords are worth keeping. They protect your best queries from being absorbed into a campaign you cannot read in detail.
Structuring asset groups for tours and hotels
An asset group is a set of creative assets and audience signals directed at one theme. Google’s help page describes asset groups as collections of creative assets such as images, headlines and videos. Do not put everything into one group. Separate them by what guests are buying.
| Business type | Sensible asset groups |
|---|---|
| Activity operator | One group per activity family, for example winter safaris, summer hikes, private experiences |
| Hotel or resort | Rooms and stays, dining, packages, and a group for groups or events |
| DMC or multi-day operator | One group per destination or itinerary, written for the source market |
Within each group, supply varied, real material: photographs your own team took, short videos from phones, headlines that state the activity, location and season, and descriptions that mention what is included. Avoid stock images of generic smiling travellers. Guests are choosing an experience, and a real photo of your group on your trail does more than a polished picture of somewhere else.
Signals, search themes and negative keywords
You cannot give Performance Max a keyword list in the way you can with search, but you can guide it. Search themes let you describe the intent you want, such as “guided snowmobile safari in winter”. Audience signals can include past bookers and website visitors, which help Google find similar people. Neither is a hard limit, and Google presents them as guidance.
Negative keywords are your protection against irrelevant demand. For tours, typical exclusions include job and volunteer searches, free and cheap-seeking terms if your offer is premium, rental terms if you do not rent, and destinations you do not serve. Review the search term insights you can access and keep adding exclusions. This is routine work, so schedule it monthly.
Final URL expansion: a decision, not a default
Google notes that final URL expansion lets it match queries to relevant landing pages and generate dynamic assets, and that you remain responsible for checking that the landing page content and generated assets are accurate. For a tour operator, an accuracy slip means a wrong price, an outdated season or a tour that no longer runs.
Our approach is cautious. Start with expansion limited or off, point each asset group at the right tour page, and widen only after you have reviewed what Google would show. If your site is well organised and your prices change rarely, you can relax the limits later.
A cautious test plan for the first 90 days
Here is a sensible way to trial Performance Max without risking the season.
- Run search campaigns for at least a few weeks and confirm booking conversions record properly.
- Add brand exclusions and a first list of negative keywords before launch.
- Launch one Performance Max campaign for your strongest tour, with one or two asset groups.
- Set a budget you can afford to lose and leave it alone for the learning period, rather than changing settings daily.
- Compare the result with your search campaign on cost per booking, and look at whether total bookings rose or whether it only took credit.
- Expand to a second tour only if the first one adds bookings you can trace.
Pair the test with the seasonal timing in your marketing calendar for 2027. Starting just before the booking window for a season gives you data when it matters, and starting at the end of a season gives you noise.
When we would not use Performance Max
Skip it, or delay it, if you take few online bookings, if most bookings arrive by email or phone with no tracking, if your daily budget is very small, or if you cannot yet say what a booking is worth. In those cases a tighter search campaign and a better landing page usually do more. If you want help setting up the account, tracking and campaigns together, see our Google and Meta ads service.
Frequently asked questions
Is Performance Max better than a search campaign for tours?
Not as a starting point. Search gives you control and clear query data. Performance Max can add reach once search is working and tracking is sound, so we see it as an addition and not a replacement.
How much budget does it need?
Google does not give a single number that suits every account, and it offers budget recommendations in the setup. As a rule, you need enough budget to collect a meaningful number of bookings in a few weeks. If you only expect a handful of conversions a month, test search first.
Can we stop it showing ads for our own brand name?
Google’s controls include brand exclusions and negative keywords, which are designed for this. Check the results rather than assuming they work perfectly, and compare your brand search volumes before and after.
Can we use our own photos and videos?
Yes, and we recommend it. Real images of your tours, guides and locations usually communicate better than stock material. Make sure you have the right to use every person and place shown.
How do we know it is adding bookings and not just taking credit?
Compare total bookings from all sources before and during the test, check how many conversions come from brand queries, and watch cost per booking against your search campaigns. If total bookings do not rise, the campaign is mostly relabelling existing demand.
The short version
Treat Performance Max as a second-stage tool. Get tracking right, run search first, exclude your brand, give it real photos and a tight structure, and judge it on total bookings, not on the number in the campaign report.