Clicks, Carts, and Bookings: Where Travel Marketing ROI Falls Apart

A data-first walkthrough of where travel brands actually make money online, and where the spend slips out to sea.

Morning at HNL. Roll-aboards hum. A family argues quietly about seats. Someone checks their phone. The map shows where to go, but the trip was decided long before. Screenshots from Instagram. Reviews clipped into Notes. Pins dropped in Tripit. A ride app already open beside the hotel check-in.

The choices were made quietly, over time, stitched across apps no one thinks about. Digital ad spending in travel hit $6.79B in 2024 with 14.3% growth. International air travel is projected at 5.2B passengers in 2025. Big movement. Yet most brands still cannot answer a basic question: did the spend pay for itself.

Where the Money Actually Comes From

Email Marketing: Quiet, steady, underused

People chase TikTok. Email keeps printing. $36–$42 revenue for every $1 spent is the benchmark. Travel underperforms that, even though the channel fits the planning timeline.

Benchmarks today: 15.70% open rate, 1.60% click-through. Low for what is possible.

What works when teams respect the data they already have:

• Personalized itinerary follow-ups convert about 3× better than generic newsletters.
• Abandoned booking flows recover 15–30% of lost revenue.
• Segments by destination interest or travel frequency beat blasts every time.

Over 80% of travelers plan on digital platforms. Most brands still send one-size emails. The data sits there, unused.

Paid Search: The dependable workhorse

Google Ads still does the job when intent is high. Travel services show a median ROAS of 7.71 with 8.24% CTR. That is top tier across industries.

Patterns inside the performance:

• Search Network averages 8.05 ROAS vs 3.03 for Performance Max.
• Facebook retargeting delivers 7.45 ROAS vs 1.55 for lookalikes.
• Branded search converts around 18%, but US CPC is $1.34, the highest among countries.

The missed spot is voice. People now ask assistants for “best family resorts in Maui.” Brands that optimize for conversational queries capture intent before a competitor even enters the auction.

Social: Where discovery starts, not where it ends

Facebook shows 3.52 ROAS for travel services. The hard value is longer tail.

How it actually helps:

• Instagram discovery influences 35% of people finding new destinations.
• UGC carries trust. See Experience Gold Coast’s #LOVEGC effort.
• Retargeting beats prospecting. Facebook retargeting at 7.45 ROAS vs 3.49 for prospecting.

Attribution here stretches past 30 days. The window is long. The last-click story is wrong.

Where the Money Leaks

Mobile experience

60% of travel traffic is mobile. Mobile loads 70.9% slower than desktop. Average page load is 3.9s. Top sites come in under 1.7s.

A one-second delay cuts conversions by 7%. A one-second delay cuts conversions by 7%. That’s the kind of leak we fix with our SEO service. If online revenue is $1M, that is $70,000 gone to latency.

Cart abandonment

Travel’s 80% cart abandonment rate vs 68–74% elsewhere is the loudest alarm. You paid for high-intent traffic (8.24% CTR on Google). Then you lose 4 of 5 at the last step. Industry conversion ranges 0.2%–4%. Top players hit 3–4%.

Everything before checkout is wasted if checkout is where the friction exists. The less users question their purchase at the end of the funnel, the better your revenue numbers look.

Vanity metrics

Cheap CPMs feel good and do little. Third-party cookies, data silos, and cost-per-impression goals mask the number that matters: revenue per visitor.

The Virginia tourism update is a case in point. 59,000 users, 2.5% traffic growth, “significant digital investments.” No booking or revenue attribution cited. Activity reported. Achievement unclear. But it reads well.

AI Is Rewriting the Funnel

80% of travelers now use generative tools. Over 50% are ready for AI agents to plan and book end-to-end. AI travel startups took 45% of industry VC in H1 2025, up from 10% in 2023.

Among active users, generative systems have passed social and OTAs for discovery. That matters more than any single ad unit.

Search volume falls. Attribution fogs. Journeys skip your channels.

Optimizing for AI agents means making details legible to machines before a traveler ever reaches your site. A resort in Maui, for example, can mark up its pages so an AI can confidently answer: “Which family-friendly resorts in Maui include breakfast and airport transfers.” The property that states those facts clearly in text and schema is the one most likely to be surfaced when the AI builds an itinerary. That’s the kind of visibility we build with Generative Engine Optimization.

Why this sticks: 73% of consumers report information overload in traditional trip planning, and 73% abandon bookings due to choice paralysis. AI removes options until a decision feels safe.

Performance notes from teams using agents now: 59% report higher employee productivity. 36% see higher-quality outputs. Most report >6% annual revenue growth. What we do not have yet at scale is a clean A/B between agent-led flows and classic funnels. The first brands to solve attribution in this model will enjoy an unfair window.

What High-Performers Do

Measure revenue, not visits

Average bounce sits at 50.65%. Top performers push under 18.5%. They get there by fixing experience, not buying more traffic. Incremental revenue is the north star.

Treat channels as a system

Organic contributes 30.7% of traffic. Paid search adds 19.6%. They work together. Last-click stories are incomplete. Map the journey. Price the assists.

Optimize for lifetime value

A $200 first booking that repeats beats a $500 one-off. Referral programs convert at 9.5% on average. Build for the second and third stay.

Learn from recovery, not just growth

Experience Gold Coast invested about A$3 million in its #LOVEGC recovery campaign, aimed at reviving tourism after cyclone damage in the lead up to Easter (Courier-Mail).

Case study compilations report that local businesses saw revenues lift by around 15% and Easter bookings return to near pre crisis levels (DigitalDefynd). They spent $3 million. The lift was visible in shopfronts and Easter bookings, not just in ad reports.

The Bottom Line

• Google Ads can return 7.71 ROAS. Only if your funnel works.
• Email still pays $36–$42 per $1. Most brands waste it.
• Mobile speed isn’t optional. One second of delay costs 7% of bookings.
• Social sells inspiration and retargeting, not first clicks.
• AI agents are taking discovery. If you don’t adapt, you won’t even enter the conversation.

Cookies are gone. Browsers block more by default. Travelers block more by choice. The easy signals disappear. What remains is harder to track, but lifetime value and assists are the new standard metrics of campaign success.