Measure your results

Start with the questions your business needs to answer: where did suitable enquiries come from, how many became bookings and what did those bookings contribute? Analytics helps explain behaviour; your enquiry and booking records show what the business actually gained.

UK guidance allows a narrow statistical-purposes exception for collecting aggregate information solely to improve your website or service. It requires clear information and a simple, free way to object. It does not cover individual tracking, profiling or advertising. Do not assume a normal GA4 installation qualifies: the purpose, settings, data handling and any provider's use of the information all matter.

Storage or access on a visitor's device for advertising, including associated measurement, requires consent. Explain the purposes and third parties, and respect withdrawal. Moving an implementation server-side does not remove consent requirements for any device storage or access it still uses, or the data protection obligations that apply. Ask your website team to assess the actual setup and test acceptance, refusal and withdrawal before relying on it.

Measure completed enquiries separately from searches, brochure views and contact-button clicks. Track confirmed bookings where your setup supports this. In GA4, important business actions are called key events. Google Ads conversion actions can then be configured for advertising measurement. Check which actions the campaign uses for bidding so it does not optimise towards an easy button click when you really need enquiries.

Open the landing page on a phone, submit a test enquiry and check its arrival and measurement. Verify that errors do not count as success and that one successful submission is not counted twice. Confirm the route through any embedded search tool, external booking domain or payment page. Cross-domain measurement needs a supported implementation; excluding a payment provider from referral reports does not add tracking to its pages.

Use labelled links for email, social and partner promotion. For example: https://www.example.com/japan?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=japan_planning Use consistent names. Never put customer names, email addresses or personal booking details in analytics links or ordinary event parameters.

Record the enquiry date, source where known, holiday interest, whether it was valid, quote status, booking outcome and reason for losing the opportunity. Ask customers how they found you, while recognising that memory is imperfect. Relate later bookings to the original enquiries; travel decisions can cross reporting periods.

Use the amount your business retains, not the full holiday price. Consider commission or margin after applicable variable costs, including servicing and cancellation allowances, before advertising and fixed overheads.

Illustrative example only: suppose an average completed booking contributes £300 before advertising and fixed overheads. You decide you can spend up to £100 to acquire it. If one in five valid enquiries becomes a booking, your planning allowance is £20 per valid enquiry: £100 multiplied by 20%. These are examples, not travel-industry benchmarks.

Compare spend with the enquiries it generated and the later bookings from those enquiries. Do not divide this month's spend by unrelated bookings made this month. Use one consistent attribution rule in your business records; the same booking can receive credit in more than one advertising platform, so do not add their reported booking totals together.

Cost per valid enquiry: campaign advertising spend ÷ valid enquiries.

Enquiry-to-booking rate: bookings from those enquiries ÷ valid enquiries × 100.

Advertising cost per booking: campaign advertising spend ÷ bookings from those enquiries.

Contribution after advertising: contribution from those bookings before advertising − campaign advertising spend.

Illustrative review: £240 of advertising generates 12 valid enquiries and, after allowing for the sales cycle, three bookings. The enquiry cost is £20, the booking rate is 25% and the advertising cost per booking is £80. If each booking contributes £300 before advertising and fixed overheads, £660 remains after the £240 advertising spend: (3 × £300) − £240. This is not net profit; account for any creative or agency costs and other overheads still to be paid. Avoid counting a cost twice.

Record cancellations and update the contribution when outcomes change. With no bookings, report spend and zero bookings; a cost per booking cannot yet be calculated. Keep attribution uncertainty visible, and do not treat a handful of outcomes as a reliable long-term rate.

Clicks without enquiries: check tracking, page relevance and the mobile experience. Invalid enquiries: review targeting and promises. Good enquiries without bookings: examine suitability, pricing and follow-up. Bookings with weak contribution: review costs before increasing advertising.

Review regularly with one owner. Choose one change, record it and allow an appropriate period to learn from the result. Platform attribution and business records may differ; investigate material gaps instead of forcing them to match.

• Privacy choices have been checked for the actual measurement setup.
• A successful enquiry is measured once, including any external booking journey where supported.
• Enquiries can be followed through to quotes and bookings.
• An acquisition allowance is based on the contribution the business retains.

Please review the measurement journey from [landing page] to [successful enquiry or booking]. Confirm which events and domains can be supported, what requires configuration elsewhere, and how we should verify consent choices and prevent duplicates.

For a worked enquiry-record example, read How to measure enquiries from travel marketing.