2026 industry benchmark · Travel
Travel CPC in 2026
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Digital Signet. Updated July 2026.
The Travel category averages $2.14 per search click in 2026 LocaliQ, 2026 data, below the $5.42 all-industry average. Figures are USD as sourced; the maths transfers to any currency.
The dataset row
Avg CPC
$2.14
vs $5.42 all-industry
Avg CTR
9.32%
vs 6.64% all-industry
Avg CVR
5.83%
vs 8.18% all-industry
Avg CPL
$44.70
vs $66.69 all-industry
All four figures: LocaliQ, 2026 data.
What drives the price
Travel clicks are nearly the cheapest in the table because online travel agencies absorbed the head terms decades ago and margins on any single booking are thin; no independent can bid a flight-comparison click to $8. The compensation: travel's 9.32% click-through rate is the second highest measured, and volume is enormous.
For an independent operator the play is specificity. Generic destination terms belong to the OTAs; a niche tour, a property type, a locality can be owned at $2-class prices, and the 5.83% conversion rate says those clicks act at a respectable rate.
Cheap clicks tempt CPM-style thinking; resist it. Even at $2.14, 500 dollars is only 233 clicks, and the clicks-to-customers chain still decides whether the till rings.
What $500 a month buys
Worked strip · category medians
Budgets in £ or € divide exactly the same way against your own measured CPC. Run your numbers, pre-filled with this category's median, in the find-your-CPC calculator.
Where the category sits
Full 24-row table on the benchmark board. Whether an under-average CPC is affordable for you is a break-even question: what is a good CPC.