We’re giving an unprecedented view of our 2026 summer tourism season: more than $5M in platform-attributed revenue, 1,500+ working notes from our team as things happened, and what we mastered granularly alongside our clients each step of the way.
A note on privacy: Every figure here is aggregated across our portfolio. No individual client, location, product, or campaign is identified.
The 2026 tourism ad season, by the numbers
We get it. People want to see the work behind the curtain.
Our case studies and portfolio pages are where visitors spend the most time on our site. And on discovery calls, we almost always get some version of: “Okay, but how?” Fair question.
So we’re doing something we’ve never done. We’re opening the working log our team kept while managing nearly seven figures in tourism ads from June through October 15, 2026, an extended summer season that finished with more than $5 million in attributed revenue.
This log is essentially “our notes.” It’s what we discuss and put down during our internal health check meetings and along the way, as we work individually, along with the 3rd party tools we use to capture absolutely every opportunity possible while the marketing world quickly evolves.
The logs are where the season actually lives. They keep everything the tourism businesses we work with were dealing with and caring about, day to day, as well as noting what we did about it across their campaigns.
It’s in these margins that an operator tells us an offer is already sold out. It’s where we changed what a phone call was worth after checking with reservations. It’s where we explain why a perfectly decent ROAS still didn’t earn more budget.
And all of this together gives one a never-before-seen view of what an award-winning agency sees on the backside of the results.
So read on for an editorial look at the data, the performance openings, the market shifts, and the very human responses to the here and now.
We’ve kept this as an aggregated view for the most part, so client names and identifiers are redacted.
The rest, however, is as clear as it gets.
Now for the tea…
Every figure comes straight from the tracker our team updated all season, June 1 to October 15, 2026: more than $5M in platform-attributed revenue, a 5.1x blended return on ad spend, 17,100+ tracked bookings, and 2,300+ tracked phone calls. Nearly a quarter of the revenue-tracked brands we manage returned 9x or more for the season.
1) Which tourism businesses got the best return on ads? A breakdown by vertical.
Attractions got the most back per dollar, at 8x. Watersports made the most money, with 63% of the season’s revenue. Events and shows sold the biggest tickets. Multi-day trips have a very long booking window, and sales are generally closed through direct inquiries instead of website checkouts. Here’s the season, June 1 to October 15, by vertical:
| Vertical | Revenue per Booking | Total Cost per Booking | Best Month in Review |
| Attractions | $177 | $22 | July |
| Multi-Day Trips | Varies. Mostly sold by inquiry. | $21 per lead | September |
| Watersports | $342 | $72 | July |
| Day Tours | $153, estimated | $35, estimated | August |
| Events and Shows | $536 | $133 | July |
| Adventure | $111 | $63 | June |
*Day tours: revenue includes an estimated value for sales made by phone, so per-sale figures count online bookings plus phone sales. Adventure: one brand’s purchase tracking wasn’t reporting for most of the season, so its sales don’t appear in these figures; without that brand, adventure returned 2.2x at $50 per booking. Accounts measured on clicks or form fills, with no sales value attached, aren’t in these figures.
Watersports
Parasailing, snorkeling, jet skis, boat rentals, dolphin and eco tours, tiki and sunset cruises, and sailing charters were the engine of the season.
As expected, weather ran this vertical: These product types were the most mid-summer-dependent, with 40% of their revenue in July, and 2% in the first half of October. A July tropical storm forced budget pullbacks across several watersports brands in the same week.
Watersports also held its costs better into the fall: in September, its median cost per booking rose 32%, against 58% for attractions. The top watersports brand returned 14x for the season, and at least a third of watersports brands returned 9x or more. And the phones never stopped (see No. 2).
For watersports digital campaigns segments, Meta beat Google’s ROAS, 5.9x to 4.4x.
Attractions
Attractions was the most efficient vertical, at $22 a booking on lots of affordable tickets. It had September’s best story, thanks to a fall event (see No. 7).
In September, its median cost per booking rose 58%.
Overall, it returned 9.4x on Meta!
Day Tours
City and sightseeing tours ran on a later calendar than the rest of our study’s segments.
It’s been a challenging summer for day tours, but in the end, our day-tour campaigns returned a 4.35x ROAS, at about $35 per sale once phone sales are counted. Much of their demand came by phone, so we bid toward call leads as well as purchases, and in late July we started counting call value in revenue. Their revenue peaked in August and September as the fall busy season approached.
Events and Shows
Event and show experiences sold the biggest tickets, at $536 per booking. Among verticals that sell mostly online, they also had the highest cost per booking, at $133.
The vertical brought in a tenth of the season’s revenue, and its top brand returned 5.8x.
Note: Some of these campaigns wrapped in early September, so the vertical’s September numbers are partial.
Multi-Day Trips
Most of these trips sell through a conversation, so we worked closely with our multi-day clients to set a clear estimated value on each inquiry. Many times, this estimate became an evolving number, as we worked with our client partners to roll out new types of campaigns and newer products.
Leads averaged about $21 each across the season, and cost per lead fell 24% from June to September.
This was the only vertical whose best month was September. Many travelers start planning big trips around this time for the next year, so the rise makes logical sense.
Adventure Travel
Adventure travel can be heavily dependant on great weather and heavily correlated to economic up or downturns. This year, both, and especially the super hot weather in the southern United States, attributed to bottom line.
In trugh, adventure stubbornly held an initial average 2.2x at $50 per booking, but was also the season’s turnaround story: #TeamVonMack performed an experimental full rehaul, which led to one campaign’s ROAS rising more than 500% period over period in early October.
2) How many tour and activity bookings start with a phone call?
More than ad reports show, and more as the price goes up. From July 1 to October 15, our Google Ads campaigns logged about 2,300 tracked phone calls. Where we could line calls up against online bookings, there were 58 calls for every 100 online bookings.
Ticket size drove it:
That’s more than one call for every four online sales below $300, and about two for every three above it.
For the most call-heavy brands, the phone outran the checkout: they logged more calls than online bookings across the whole season.
The phone also got louder as summer faded. Among brands we tracked all summer, calls rose from 76 per 100 online bookings in August to 104 in September, more calls than online sales.
While a call doesn’t necessarily entail a booking, it’s important to remember that at $300 or more a head, plenty of travelers want a human to say “yes” first.
Other research points the same way. In an Inntopia survey of about 250 travelers, 22% said they would book a resort trip by phone, and Invoca’s 2026 travel benchmarks found that 41% of travel call leads convert on the call.
3) Does a good ROAS mean you should spend more on ads?
Not automatically. When we raised a campaign’s monthly spend by 10% or more between June and September, ROAS fell after 64% of those raises.
The added dollars still paid: together, each extra dollar brought back $4.38 in attributed revenue. But the dollars already in those campaigns had been earning $5.76. The higher the starting ROAS, the harder the fall. On campaigns already above 8x, ROAS dropped after 82% of raises.
That’s the trap with a big ROAS number. It describes the average dollar, not the next one.
Do budget cuts improve ROAS?
In our study, budget cuts improved ROAS about half the time.
When we cut a campaign’s monthly spend by 10% or more between June and September, ROAS improved after just 55% of those cuts. About as even as a coin flip.
It got more than 10% worse after 40% of them. And the month after a cut, revenue fell by a median 46%.
What’s interesting is that the platform mattered here. On Google Ads, cuts improved ROAS 68% of the time. On Meta, just 42%.
If a campaign is reaching new travelers and there are seats to fill, a strong ROAS is a fine reason to spend more. One attraction’s September math made the case: ROAS dipped, but the extra spend returned about three times its cost in extra revenue, compared with the year before.
Before a raise, we ask three questions at Von Mack:
“Are there seats left?” When one sailing company’s best-selling promo kept selling out, we moved the push to its other sailings.
“Are there people left?” We check search volume and audience size.
“Does the next dollar still pay?” We judge the added spend against the added revenue, not the average. When a late-September raise held one account’s ROAS above its monthly average, we raised it again by 25%.
Before a cut, we find out what’s actually moving: weather, school calendars, a sold-out date, the offer, the price per booking.
4) Do Google Ads or social ads bring in more money for tour operators?
Reflecting only on total averages by channel within this study, Google brought in more money, but Meta earned more per dollar.
On Google Ads, the top quarter of our accounts returned 7.8x or better. Google Ads produced $3.3M of the season’s attributed revenue (66%) on 71% of the spend, a blended 4.7x.
Meta, meaning Facebook and Instagram, produced $1.7M (34%) on 28% of the spend, a blended 6.2x, and more than 7x across June and July.
However, when comparing within the same brand, head to head, the results were much closer.
When the same brand ran both platforms in the same month, Meta posted the higher ROAS 47% of the time and Google 53%.
The typical campaign-month landed in nearly the same place on either platform: a median 4.5x on Google and 4.3x on Meta. Meta’s standout accounts ran in the double digits, which lifted its blended number.
What decided the winner was the calendar. Meta won most head-to-head months in June and July, when travelers book on impulse. From August on, Google won most of them, as travelers moved into planning mode.
Google’s bookings were worth more. In months where both platforms logged at least three bookings, Google brought in more revenue per booking 69% of the time, a median $356 vs. $330 on Meta.
That’s not the usual script.
At Von Mack, we build integrated campaigns with blended targets, but generally, we give each platform a job.
Meta builds the want and retargets people who almost booked. Google catches the plan.
The head-to-head pattern says the mix should shift with the season, with more weight on Meta while travelers browse and more on search once they plan.
When Google changed how its bidding targets work in mid-August, we reset target ROAS and cost-per-booking goals ad group by ad group to match each account’s real performance.
We also dismissed a pile of Google’s automated recommendations that would have hurt performance.
And it’s important to ensure that no platform gets to grade its own homework. We check every report against analytics and the booking system, which is how 4,000 conversions turned back into 39.
5) When do tour and activity businesses make their money?
In July, mostly, for our summer season study. July alone brought in 37% of the season’s attributed revenue, about $1.9M of the $5.0M. June brought in 25%, August 24% and September 11%. The first half of October added 3%.
Measured per day, July brought in more than three times what September did. Blended ROAS barely moved over the same stretch, slipping from 5.4x to 4.7x.
So while ROAS alone can’t tell you it’s September, your booking calendar probably can.
The pattern held across the portfolio. More than seven in ten campaigns (72%) had their biggest month in July. For the typical brand, June and July delivered nearly two-thirds of its June-to-September revenue.
The trick is to spend hardest where the money is, then step down on purpose.
In July, budgets went up heading into the holiday weekend.
In August, several accounts spent aggressively through the first two weeks, then pulled back as kids went back to school.
When a tropical storm sat offshore, we cut spend for those days and restored it the moment it passed.
And the slow weeks weren’t wasted: one trip company used its August hours to build ads for next year’s departures.
6) Can you trust your ROAS in the first ten days of the month?
Not yet. All summer, our team logged the ROAS each ad platform was reporting, week by week, then checked it against where the month actually finished.
In the first ten days, the platforms’ ROAS sat a median 34% away from the final number. Only 23% of those early readings landed within 10% of it. The middle of the month wasn’t much better, a median 23% off.
By the last ten days, half of all readings landed within 10% of the final, and the typical gap shrank to 9%. That’s exactly when our team makes the big calls.
Our biggest tip in this case is to compare like with like. A week-one number gets checked against last month’s week one.
For example, our log is full of lines like “Compared to July 1 to 7, purchases are up 8%.”
We check the booking system, not only the ad platform, which is how half a purchase got caught three weeks late. We save the big budget calls for the last third of the month, when readings land within a median 9% of the final number.
7) Why do tourism ads cost more per booking in September?
In our data, it was fewer travelers chasing the same ads, and the travelers who were left spent less.
We compared every campaign with steady bookings in June, July, and September. In 83% of them, a September booking cost more than that campaign’s own June-to-July average. The median increase was 38%.
Those bookings were also worth less.
Revenue per booking fell in 70% of campaigns, by a median 12%. Together, that pushed ROAS down in 74% of them, by a median 39%.
The turn started earlier than most people think.
By August, the median cost per booking was already 31% above June to July.
And we found that one pattern stood out… The campaigns that kept their cost per booking in check were the ones that cut hardest.
Campaigns that spent at least 60% less in September than their June-to-July monthly average saw their median cost per booking rise just 9%. For everyone else, it rose 75%.
What this Means for Tourism Marketers
Tourism is not e-commerce with palm trees. A guest has to feel an experience before they buy it, fit it into a real day, and often talk it through with someone, sometimes a real person on the phone. Ad reports were built to count clicks and purchases. They were never built to see a family’s half-day, a sale that closed on a call, or a budget cut made in an August panic.
That doesn’t make the reports wrong. It makes them incomplete, and the gaps get expensive when decisions run on the report alone: cutting spend that was working, assuming the off-season is cheaper when each booking costs more, or calling a month a win (or a loss) before the 20th.
So get closer to the numbers, and to the deeper workings of the business behind them. Know what actually sold, what was merely attributed, where a guest needed help, and which conclusions the evidence can’t support yet. And let’s not declare victory or defeat on the ninth of the month because Pixeldust had a good morning.
That’s the work we do at Von Mack. Our digital marketing team puts the numbers next to the booking reality, from the official booking path to the phone, then works out what the next strategic decision actually requires. Tourism is all we do. Moving it forward is why.
Before you buy more traffic or cut another budget, find out where the journey breaks. Request a fit conversation, and tell us what’s happening, what you’ve already tried, and where you think the system is breaking. If we’re not the right team, we’ll tell you.
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