The Situation
Le Petit Navire runs small-group cruises on two fully electric boats from Montreal’s Old Port. The season runs roughly May to October, summer carries more than half the year’s revenue, and most guests book about three days before they sail. That leaves a short window to win each booking, and no room for an ad account that spends without selling.
In 2024, about a fifth of revenue (20.7%) came through third-party resellers such as Viator and GetYourGuide. Every one of those bookings carries a commission, and the same resellers compete for the searches Le Petit Navire wants to own. Google Ads should have been the channel sending travelers straight to the operator’s own booking page. It was not pulling its weight.
Our December 2024 audit showed why. Search and Display campaigns were running together, so budget meant for people ready to book was spread across lower-intent placements. Ad groups mixed unrelated keywords, which weakens ad relevance and Quality Score and pushes click costs up. Auto-apply recommendations and automatic text assets were switched on, so Google could change campaigns and messaging without review. Geo-targeting had room to focus on the regions that actually converted. Plenty of tour operators will recognize the pattern: an account that produces clicks, with nobody steering it toward purchases.
Our Approach
The strategic decision was to stop judging the account on traffic and start judging it on purchases. Evaluation came first, the E in our SCORE framework. After a November 2024 kickoff workshop and access to GA4, Google Ads, WordPress and FareHarbor, we audited the account and delivered the findings in a Strategic Marketing Plan in December 2024.
Then we rebuilt the structure. We pulled search away from display and built two search campaigns: one for the brand name and one for high-intent keywords. The high-intent campaign was split into tightly themed ad groups (Montreal boat tour, Montreal boat cruise, Montreal river cruise, Montreal boat ride and private tours) so each search met an ad written for it. We turned off auto-apply and automatic text assets to keep messaging under control. The themed keyword plan was set in January 2025, ahead of the summer.
In March 2025 we tightened targeting before the season opened. Keywords moved from broad to phrase match to cut irrelevant searches. We reviewed competitor terms and paused the competitor ad group in favor of higher-volume, high-intent keywords. We also connected Google Search Console and added Microsoft Clarity to see how visitors moved through the site.
Bidding followed a phased plan: gather click data first, move to Maximize Conversions once purchase data built up, then progress to target ROAS. The High Intent Keywords campaign moved to Maximize Conversions in April 2025. That was the account we handed over when our work on it ended that month: a clean structure with bidding pointed at purchases, ready for summer.
The Results
The rebuilt account’s first full summer was its strongest. From June to September 2025, Google Ads purchases rose 142% over June to September 2024, from 382 to 922. Conversion rate climbed from 5.2% to 8.3%, and cost per booking fell 12%.
- 142% more bookings from Google Ads (382 to 922)
- Conversion rate up from 5.2% to 8.3%
- Cost per booking down 12%
- Return on ad spend up from 6.3x to 7.2x
Ad spend also rose in 2025, by 113%, but bookings grew faster than spend and return on ad spend still improved. A bigger budget poured into a poorly structured account usually buys more low-quality clicks and drags ROAS down. Here each dollar worked harder. For an operator paying commission on a fifth of its revenue, that is the result a direct-booking strategy needs: paid search producing more bookings at a lower cost per booking, captured on its own site instead of through a reseller.
How we measured: purchases tracked in Google Ads (Purchase conversion only), with the same tracking in both years. June to September 2025 compared with June to September 2024. Source: Le Petit Navire’s Google Ads account.
How we measured this
- Metric
- Purchases tracked in Google Ads (the Purchase conversion only), with the same tracking in both years.
- Period
- June to September 2025, against June to September 2024.
- Source
- The client's Google Ads account.
- Context
- We rebuilt the account in early 2025. Ad spend also rose, and return on ad spend still improved (6.3x to 7.2x), so the extra bookings did not come from spend alone.
What Made the Difference
Structure decides what automated bidding learns. Google’s bidding tools optimize toward whatever the account says matters. In a mixed account with auto-apply on, they learn to buy clicks. In Le Petit Navire’s rebuilt account, each ad group matched one kind of booking intent, and bidding shifted to purchases only once there was data to support it. That is why the gains showed up a full season after the rebuild. For operators with a short season and last-minute bookers, the lesson is simple: fix the structure and the purchase signal before you raise the budget.