If you run a small travel or tourism business in Australia, the marketing landscape has probably never felt more complicated. A booking channel that worked reliably last year goes quiet. A new platform promises everything and delivers little. And somewhere in the background, something fundamental is shifting in the way travellers actually research and plan their trips.
At Websites That Sell, we understand travel and tourism businesses, and we have a clear picture of what is working, what is not, and where the biggest opportunities lie right now. This article covers all of it, from the rise of AI-driven travel research through to the conversion basics that too many operators are still getting wrong.
The Biggest Shift in Travel Marketing
The travel and tourism industry took a serious hit in 2020. Borders shut, bookings collapsed, and operators had to rebuild almost from scratch. That was a disruption nobody saw coming. What is happening right now is arguably just as significant, but this time the opportunity is there for operators who move early.
The shift is in how people research their travel. For a long time, travellers relied on agents, comparison sites, or just hours of their own searching to piece together a trip. That process is being transformed by AI. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google Gemini are now being used by travellers to plan entire holidays from scratch. They type in what kind of trip they want, where they are thinking of going, and what their budget is, and the AI does the rest.
What makes this particularly important for travel businesses is that these AI tools pull their answers from content that exists on the web. If your business does not have the right content available online, you simply will not appear in those conversations. The traveller will be pointed elsewhere, often before they have even visited a single booking site.
In practical terms, this means that the role traditionally played by travel agents is increasingly being filled by AI assistants. Operators who understand this and start building a presence in AI search now are going to have a significant head start over those who wait.
Traditional SEO Is Not Dead. It Just Has a New Job to Do.
Before abandoning your existing SEO efforts, it is worth understanding exactly what traditional search still does well and where AI search fills a different gap.
For travellers who already know what they want, traditional search is still very much the tool they use. Someone who knows they are heading to Mooloolaba for a long weekend and just needs to find accommodation is going to search Google, look at results, and book. They are not asking an AI to plan their trip. They are already in buying mode, and Google, your reviews, your schema markup, and your presence on comparison sites are all doing their job in that moment.
Where AI search plays a different role is earlier in the customer journey, when someone is still in the planning or dreaming phase. They might know they want a winter getaway but have no idea where or what kind of experience they are after. That is where AI tools are stepping in, and that is where you want your content to be showing up.
The good news is that the technical work you do for traditional SEO also supports your AI visibility. Schema markup on your website helps AI engines parse your content correctly. A strong review profile and solid brand reputation both matter in AI search just as they do in Google. So the fundamentals have not changed; there is just an additional layer of strategy to build on top.
Where to Start If Your Budget Is Limited
For smaller operators who cannot afford to do everything at once, there is a clear priority order. Start with your Google Business Profile. Get it fully built out, keep it updated, and actively encourage guests or customers to leave reviews. Respond to those reviews, including the negative ones. This is free to do, and it has a meaningful impact on both traditional search visibility and on how your business is perceived when someone researches you online or via AI.
The second priority is making sure you have a presence on the major third-party booking platforms like Wotif and Trivago. Yes, the commission is a cost, and it can feel frustrating to hand over a percentage of each booking. But these platforms have enormous marketing budgets, and they are driving significant volumes of traffic. Not being on them means missing out on bookings you would otherwise have. The goal is to be well-represented on these platforms while also building the direct channels that reduce your dependence on them over time.
Your Website Is Probably Losing Bookings You Don’t Know About
Getting traffic to your website is only part of the equation. What happens after someone lands on your site is just as important, and for a lot of travel and tourism businesses, the answer is: not much. They leave without booking.
The most common culprit is a clunky booking process. Often, this comes down to budget, with operators using a basic plugin that technically works but creates too much friction for the user. The booking button is hard to find, the process has too many steps, there is no obvious way to pay securely, and there is no phone number visible for someone who has a quick question before committing.
A simple and effective way to diagnose this is to recruit a couple of friends or family members who are unfamiliar with your website, sit behind them, and watch them try to make a booking. Do not help them. Just observe where they hesitate, where they get confused, and where they give up. You will almost certainly find friction points you had no idea existed, and fixing them does not require a full website rebuild. It just requires knowing where to look.
Mobile optimisation deserves special attention here. A lot of travel websites look polished on desktop but are difficult to use on a phone, with oversized images that slow load times and buttons that are hard to tap. Check Google Search Console to see what proportion of your traffic is coming from mobile devices. If it is the majority, and for most travel businesses it will be, then mobile optimisation should be a top priority rather than an afterthought.
Common Booking Website Mistakes to Look For
- The booking button is buried or not visible on mobile
- No phone number or live chat option for last-minute questions before committing
- Payment process feels unsecured or unfamiliar, with no trust signals like security badges or recognisable payment options
- No email confirmation or follow-up after an enquiry, leaving the customer unsure if anything was received
- Images that are too large and slow the page down on mobile, causing people to abandon before the page even loads
- Availability or pricing information that is out of date, creating doubt before a booking is even started
How to Use Urgency Without Losing Trust
Scarcity and time pressure are well-established tools for driving conversions, and the travel industry is genuinely well-suited to using them. Limited spots on a tour, a seasonal promotion with a hard end date, a cruise with only a handful of cabins remaining; these are real and legitimate reasons for a potential customer to act now rather than coming back to it later.
The important distinction is between urgency that is real and urgency that is manufactured. Telling someone there are only three rooms left when your property has hundreds of rooms, and you are in low season, is the kind of tactic that erodes trust when customers figure it out, and they often do. Avoid it.
Instead, look at where your business genuinely has limited availability or seasonality. A fishing charter that can only run during certain months. A popular whale watching season on the Sunshine Coast, with limited spots per trip. A boutique property that books out quickly over school holidays. These are authentic triggers for urgency, and they work precisely because they are true.
For pushing time-sensitive promotions out to a broader audience, paid social is the right channel. People are not going to search for an offer they do not know exists, so Facebook and Instagram ads are well-suited to getting seasonal deals in front of the right audience. For urgency tactics on your website itself, such as limited availability notices, these work best for visitors who are already in research mode and just need a final nudge.
Why Travel Businesses Have a Content Advantage They Are Not Using
Content marketing works in almost every industry, but travel and tourism have a natural advantage that most operators are not capitalising on. The subject matter is inherently interesting, visual, and experiential. People want to see, feel, and imagine what they are going to experience before they book. That gives travel businesses an enormous amount to work with.
Video is one of the most powerful tools available. Rather than relying on a handful of photos that may be years old, consider documenting the actual experience your customers are going to have. If you operate a cruise in the Kimberley, film a walkthrough of each cabin category. Show the bronze cabin, then the silver, then the gold. Walk through the dining area, the deck, and the activity spaces. Give potential guests a genuine sense of what they are paying for. The same logic applies to hotels, tour operators, and adventure experiences. Showing is far more persuasive than telling.
Video Content Ideas for Travel and Tourism Operators
- Room or cabin walkthroughs for each category you offer, from standard through to premium
- A day-in-the-life video showing exactly what guests experience from arrival to departure
- Tour highlights filmed on location, showing the scenery, activities, and interactions guests can expect
- Destination guides covering what to see, where to eat, and local tips, positioning your business as the local expert
- Short-form seasonal content for Instagram and Facebook, tied to upcoming availability or promotions
- Behind-the-scenes content that builds personality and trust, showing the people behind the business
Written content has an equally important role, and it feeds directly into both traditional SEO and AI search visibility. Articles that position you as a genuine local expert, covering things like how to choose the best accommodation for a Sunshine Coast beachside trip, what to consider when booking an outback adventure, or how to compare different types of reef experiences, attract travellers in the planning phase and build trust long before they are ready to make a booking.
This kind of expert content is precisely what AI engines draw on when building responses for travellers in the research phase. If your content covers the topics that a potential customer is exploring, there is a strong chance your brand will be cited and mentioned in those AI-generated responses, which brings us back to where this article started.
One thing Australian operators tend to overlook is their international audience. If you are running tours or accommodation and all of your content is aimed at domestic travellers, you are leaving a significant opportunity on the table. International visitors who cannot find helpful, authoritative content from you will find it from someone else, potentially a local operator in their own country who has stepped into that gap.
Why Tracking Changes Everything
If your marketing activity is producing average results and you are not sure why, the first step is not to change what you are doing. It is to set up proper tracking so you actually understand what is happening.
A surprisingly large number of travel businesses are spending real money on marketing without the infrastructure to know which channels are delivering bookings and which are just generating noise. Getting a few likes on a social post is a metric. It is just not a particularly useful one if you are trying to understand what is actually driving revenue.
A well-configured GA4 setup with booking conversion goals will give you a much clearer picture of which channels are performing. Call tracking tools can take this further by assigning different phone numbers to different traffic sources, so you can see whether a phone enquiry came from a Google Ad, organic search, or a Facebook campaign. This level of visibility makes it possible to make genuinely informed decisions about where to invest your time and budget.
It is also important to look at the full picture rather than just the last click before a booking. A traveller might discover your brand through an AI search result, get hit with a Facebook promotion a few days later, and then book directly via Google. Each of those touchpoints played a role in the conversion. Understanding how your channels work together, rather than looking at each in isolation, is what allows you to build a marketing strategy that actually scales.
The principle to work by is straightforward: scale what is working, cut what is not. But you can only do that with confidence when you have the tracking in place to tell the difference.
What to Track as a Minimum
- Booking conversions and enquiry form submissions in GA4, with goals set up for each
- Phone calls per channel using a call tracking tool, so you know whether a call came from Google Ads, SEO, or social
- Traffic volume and source breakdown, so you can see which channels are sending visitors and whether that traffic is growing
- Organic search performance in Google Search Console, including which queries are bringing people to your site
- AI visibility, keeping an eye on whether your brand and content is appearing in AI-generated responses for relevant travel queries
How to Think About Paid Advertising on a Smaller Budget
For travel businesses without a large advertising budget, the key is to avoid spreading spend across too many channels at once. Start with a focused test, see what the numbers tell you, and scale from there.
As a general guide, Google Ads tends to work well when you have a product or experience that people are already searching for. If there is existing demand and people know what they want, Google captures that intent when it is strongest. Facebook and Instagram ads, on the other hand, work better for pushing promotions and offers to an audience that doesn't yet know they exist. A great seasonal deal on a whale-watching charter isn't something people are going to search for; it needs to be put in front of them.
Growing paid spend is a gradual process. What works at $1,500 a month will not automatically work at $10,000 a month. The strategy needs to grow in line with the budget. Scale incrementally, keep testing, and make sure the increased spend is being justified by a proportional increase in returns before pushing further.
Google Ads vs Facebook Ads: Which to use when
Use Google Ads when:
- People are already actively searching for your experience or destination
- You have a well-known product with existing demand, such as a reef dive tour or a popular national park experience
- You want to capture high-intent traffic at the moment someone is ready to book
Use Facebook and Instagram Ads when:
- You are running a promotion or seasonal offer that people would not know to search for
- You want to reach a specific audience by interest, location, or behaviour rather than search intent
- You are building brand awareness and want to stay front of mind during the dreaming and planning phase
Be Where Your Customers Are, Not Just Where the Hype Is
If there is a single theme running through everything above, it is this: good marketing for travel and tourism businesses comes down to being present and useful wherever your customers are in their journey, from the earliest moment of inspiration through to the point of booking and beyond.
That does not mean being on every platform. One of the most common mistakes we see is operators feeling pressure to maintain a presence on channels that simply do not reflect where their audience spends time. TikTok might be generating enormous buzz, but if your customers are not there in any meaningful way, the time investment is not justified. The same goes for any channel. Start by understanding where your customers actually are, then be genuinely good in those places rather than mediocre across the board.
The one area where we would encourage every travel and tourism business to move quickly right now is AI search. Optimising your content to appear in AI-generated travel recommendations is still a relatively uncrowded space, and the operators who build that presence early will have a meaningful advantage as AI-assisted trip planning continues to grow. It is not about abandoning what already works. It is about making sure you are visible at every stage of the modern customer journey, including the stages that did not exist a couple of years ago.
The travel and tourism industry has always been about helping people experience something extraordinary. The businesses that thrive in 2026 will be the ones that bring that same thinking to their digital presence: show up early, provide genuine value, make it easy to book, and keep measuring what is working.