In short
What is travel marketing in Washington?
Travel marketing in Washington is pre-season work for a five-month window. Seattle cruise traffic, city tours, San Juan whale watching and Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades day trips all peak between May and September, so ranking, listings and reviews are built over winter and paid concentrates inside the season.
Businesses worked with
400+
Running SEO and ad programs
6 years
Google Partner and Shopify Partner
Partner
You own every account
No lock-in
On the ground
Why Washington marketing happens in winter
Where Washington travel demand concentrates
-
Seattle
cruise embarkation, city tours and the staging point for everything
-
Mount Rainier
guided hikes and day trips bought from Seattle hotels
-
Olympic Peninsula
longer trips planned further ahead
-
North Cascades
a short, intense summer window
-
San Juan Islands
whale watching with hard seasonal edges
-
Leavenworth
a year-round festival and Bavarian-theme market
-
Tacoma
regional demand and overflow from Seattle
-
Spokane
an eastern market with its own calendar
Breakdown
Washington by buyer
| Buyer | When they book | What they search |
|---|---|---|
| Cruise passengers | Months ahead, from out of state | Port plus excursion name, pre and post stay tours |
| Park day-trippers | Night before or same week | Destination plus from Seattle, transport included |
| Island and whale watchers | Weeks ahead, seasonal | Season-specific terms, departure point |
| Locals and regional | Shoulder months, weekends | Day trip and seasonal activity terms |
What we do
The program, run as one team.
Direct bookings come from a stack working together: pages that rank for your tours, listings inside Google's own booking surfaces, ads timed to the season, and a booking path that holds up on a phone.
01
SEO for tours and destinations
Rank for the trips you actually sell.
Technical fixes first, then a page for every tour and pickup area, then destination content that catches research traffic months before a booking. Google Business Profile and reviews handled alongside.
- Tour pages
- Area pages
- Trip schema
- GBP
02
Google Things to do
Tours inside Google's own booking surface.
Operator listings, pricing and availability connected so your tours appear where Google sends activity searches first. Most operators have never set this up, which is exactly the opportunity.
- Listings
- Pricing feed
- Reviews
03
Google Ads, timed to the season
Spend lands when bookings happen.
Budget concentrated in the booking window instead of spread flat across the year. Campaigns split by tour and by intent, with call and booking tracking from day one.
- Search
- Performance Max
- Call tracking
04
Meta Ads for long decisions
Stay present while they decide.
Trips get researched for weeks before anyone pays a deposit. Prospecting builds the audience, retargeting stays present through that window, and lead tracking follows the inquiry to where it lands.
- Prospecting
- Retargeting
- Lead forms
05
Email and repeat guests
One booking becomes a list.
Pre-trip sequences, post-trip review asks and next-season offers, built in Klaviyo or the ESP you already have. Repeat and referral bookings carry zero commission.
- Flows
- Review asks
- Next-season offers
06
Booking path and CRO
Where travel sites lose the sale.
Most travel sites lose the booking between interest and checkout. We test the path on a phone, where most of it happens, and fix what drops people.
- Mobile checkout
- Inquiry flow
- Speed
What is included
In the retainer, every month.
The scope does not change by state. What changes is the season map, the competition, and which tours are worth their own page.
- Google Business Profile and Things to do setup and upkeep
- Tour and destination pages written and published
- Technical and on-page fixes implemented, not just listed
- Review flow handed to your team
- Google Ads build and management
- Meta Ads creative and management
- Email flows for pre- and post-trip
- Booking and call attribution
- A season budget plan in writing
- OTA listing hygiene, not abandonment
- Trip schema written and validated
- Monthly report and strategy call
Process
Six months, honestly described.
Listings and paid can move within weeks. Tour and destination pages take three to six months, and they have to land before the booking window opens to be worth anything.
01
Audit and season map
Your site, your listings, your ad history, and when your state's booking windows actually open. Written findings, not a dashboard.
Week 1 to 2
02
Tracking and attribution
Booking, call and inquiry tracking live before spend is judged, so decisions run on real bookings rather than totals.
Month 1
03
Technical and listing fixes
Speed, indexing, schema, Business Profile and Things to do cleared first, so everything built afterwards can actually rank and convert.
Month 1
04
Tour and destination pages
A page per tour and pickup area, written against real search demand rather than a list of place names.
Month 2 onward
05
Paid push into the season
Google and Meta concentrated into the booking window, scaled on tracked bookings, cut back when the window closes.
Timed to your peak
06
Measure
Rankings, listing actions and direct bookings retested monthly against the baseline set in the audit.
Monthly
Questions
Travel marketing questions.
If yours is not here, send it. We answer these on the first call anyway.
What does travel marketing cost for a Washington tour operator?
Retainers start at $1,000 a month and are scoped after the audit, based on the state of your site, the season ahead and the channels that fit. You approve the number before anything starts, and there is no lock-in contract.
Seattle cruise season and the park window both end by October. What happens after?
Winter is when the ranking work happens so pages are live before May bookings start. Paid concentrates inside the window and scales on tracked bookings, while shoulder months go to the email list and locals offers instead of dead spend.
Should we target cruise passengers or independent travelers?
Usually both, with separate pages. Cruise buyers book months ahead from out of state and search by port and excursion, while independent travelers decide days out and search by destination. The same page cannot serve both well.
Can we compete with the cruise lines' own excursion sales?
On your own tour name and port searches, yes. Many passengers deliberately look for independent operators before sailing because the ship's price includes a markup. Being findable at that moment is the whole opportunity.
What is Google Things to do and does it matter in Washington?
It is the first surface Google shows for activity searches, and with so many bookings decided from a Seattle hotel room it is often where the decision happens.
When should we start if we want to win next summer?
Autumn or winter. Pages take three to six months to rank and reviews take a season to build, so work starting in April is already competing for a window that is open.
How long before direct bookings move?
Listings and paid can move within weeks. Destination and tour pages take three to six months, which is why the calendar runs ahead of the season.
Travel marketing by state
- Travel marketing agency in Florida
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- Travel marketing agency in New York
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- Travel marketing agency in Hawaii
- Travel marketing agency in Colorado
- Travel marketing agency in Arizona
- Travel marketing agency in Texas
- Travel marketing agency in Tennessee
- Travel marketing agency in Georgia
- Travel marketing agency in Washington
- Travel marketing agency in Utah
- Travel marketing agency in Louisiana
- Travel marketing agency in South Carolina
- Travel marketing agency in Alaska
- Travel marketing agency in Massachusetts
Send us the site and the season you need to win.
We will come back with what is actually costing you direct bookings, in writing, before you spend anything. No deck and no sales rep.