Advertising targeting for tourism (or anything really) can feel like a lot. Tourism businesses do face their own unique challenges, at the core we know: every summer they have to figure out a creative way to attract visitors efficiently and cost-effectively during a compressed peak season.
This year, in tourism markets like Halifax and Cape Breton, we’re expecting to see fellow Canadians in bigger numbers than usual and from all over the country. Reaching them could turn what was going to be an above-average season to a massive blow out success.
With millions of people on the move—and making spending decisions on the fly—timing and targeting are everything. If you want to reach as many of these visitors as possible, you need smart targeting and that’s where our special approach to advertising targeting for tourism comes in.
There’s a lot to this, so for this blog post we’ll focus on a few of the high-level tactics we use for our tourism clients.
Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) remain one of the most powerful tools available for local tourism marketing. But changes, like the removal of the “people traveling in this location” targeting option, mean small businesses need to get more creative—and more strategic—to reach the right people at the right time.
Use Creative Advertising Targeting for Tourism to Drive ROI
With the deprecation of direct travel-related targeting, businesses now have to build smarter location-based strategies. Start by identifying your key opportunity zones—where your ideal summer visitor is likely to be before and during their trip.
Try this approach:
- Use geo-fencing around high-traffic arrival areas: airports (Halifax and Sydney), ferry terminals (Digby, Yarmouth, and North Sydney), cruise ports (Sydney and Halifax), and tourism hotspots (Halifax Waterfront, downtown Lunenberg).
- Target city-sized radiuses that surround known visitor accommodations (capture the hotel cluster in downtown Halifax, along the Bedford highway).
- Layer in additional interests like travel, outdoors, local attractions, or specific cultural events (find people interested in magazines that cater to your people).
For example, a waterfront restaurant in Lunenburg could target Halifax-based users with interest in Nova Scotia road trips, outdoor dining, and UNESCO sites—nudging them to plan a visit before they arrive.
Use Custom Audiences Creatively
One of the most powerful tools for advertising targeting for tourism is the use of custom audiences. These allow you to market directly to people who have already engaged with your business—or similar ones—online.
Key strategies include:
- Website visitors: Retarget those who visited your site but didn’t convert.
- Engaged social users: Build audiences from people who interacted with your Instagram or Facebook posts or ads.
- Email list uploads: Use your subscriber base to create a lookalike audience of similar potential tourists.
If you’ve had visitors in previous seasons, you can create lookalikes based on their behaviors—people who may also be planning similar trips this year. These ads perform well because they’re reaching people with similar travel patterns, interests, and demographics.
Tailor Your Creative for Travelers
Once you’ve honed your audience, your ad creative needs to do the heavy lifting. Remember, you’re not just selling a product or service—you’re offering an experience. And travelers, especially tourists, respond to emotion and immediacy.
Make your visuals work:
- Use high-quality imagery or short-form video to highlight your location, atmosphere, and customer experience.
- Include people in your visuals—tourists want to see themselves in the scene.
- Showcase key seasonal offerings, views, or local culture that set your business apart.
- Do not add text or overlays—let them see what they’ll experience don’t ruin it with a Canva template or salesy graphics
Leverage the text-based features of the ads to do the selling with great messaging that focuses on the experience (“Enjoy the salt water breeze in your hair as you dine with a view”) not the features of your attraction (“We have outdoor seating.”).
Your messaging should:
- Be short, direct, and emotional.
- Include time-sensitive language (“This weekend only,” “Summer favourites now on!”)
- Feature clear, mobile-friendly calls to action like “Book now” or “Visit us today”
- Ensure your ad is not running on days you are not open.
When your ad copy, visuals, and CTA are aligned—and speak to the motivations of someone exploring a new place—you dramatically improve the chances they’ll act.
Schedule Campaigns Around Travel Patterns
Tourism marketing is all about timing. Plan your ad campaigns around when visitors are most likely to be planning, arriving, and exploring.
Here’s a simple seasonal framework:
- Early May to Mid-June: Target pre-planners with discovery-focused ads (what to do, see, eat).
- Late June through August: Use geo-targeted, urgency-driven ads to catch visitors in destination mode.
- Early September: Target late-season travelers, retirees, and staycationers.
Also consider weekly patterns—weekend visitors often start planning on Wednesday or Thursday. Ads launched mid-week with weekend-centric calls to action can be especially effective.
Measure and Adjust Frequently
Tourism traffic is volatile—weather, gas prices, and even global news can impact travel volume. That’s why weekly monitoring of your ad performance is essential during peak season.
Watch metrics like:
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Cost per thousand views (CPM)
- Conversion rate (event bookings, calls, purchases)
Use A/B testing on your creative, headlines, and CTAs. If something isn’t performing after a few days, pause it and try another version. Even small optimizations can have a big impact when you’re working in a compressed time frame like summer tourism season.
Boom12 clients benefit from comprehensive dashboards with custom metrics so they aren’t buried in complicated reports, they get what they need, know how to read it, and know we’re handling it. To get there on your own, dig into what you want to get from your ad and learn how to pick a few key metrics to help you understand performance. Non-clients can benefit from our dashboards with a 12-month subscription and a small setup fee, reach out if you want to see a demo and learn more.
Get the Most from Your Summer Traffic
For small businesses that rely on tourism, advertising targeting for tourism on Meta can still be highly effective—if approached with strategy and precision. While some native targeting options have disappeared, the tools that remain allow for highly personalized, location-smart, and visually driven campaigns that move travelers from awareness to action.
This summer, focus on relevance, creative, and timing. Build campaigns that speak directly to the visiting customer—because when they find you in the right moment, you don’t just make a sale—you make a memory.