Island Expeditions September 2026 · updated 13 October

The season plan

Last season across Meta, Google and the landing pages, what we recommend adding and changing for the season now opening, and the campaigns as they stand. With a bonus look at the new website.

Our plan for the coming season, built on last season's results across Meta and Google.

Both platforms delivered well last season. Together they produced 1,200,212 impressions and 74,125 clicks, and since each campaign was given its own landing page last autumn, those pages have recorded 4,329 enquiries. With a full season of results now in, four opportunities stand out.

Ricardo suggested putting text on the images and videos, so it is clear at a glance what is being advertised. Here is a first look on last season's three best-performing photographs (section 8), in the website's own fonts. Run alongside the plain versions, the results will show which works better, and the same treatment works as an opening title on the videos.

Shown at each photograph's own proportions. The final versions would be sized for Meta's feed and Stories.

The booking window for winter and spring travel opens in the autumn and closes at the end of March, so that is where the budget goes: 77% of the year's budget sits in those seven months, peaking from November to February. From April the campaigns continue at a lower level so the audiences stay warm, then step back up in September.

1 October 2025 to 31 March 2026. 1,200,212 impressions and 74,125 clicks across both platforms, for $25,621.13 of advertising.

Since autumn 2025 every campaign has sent people to its own landing page, and each page counts the visitors who fill in the enquiry form. Because every page is measured the same way, this is the clearest like-for-like view of the campaigns.

Every audience produced enquiries. Because each one ran with the same budget last season, the cost per enquiry compares directly and shows where extra budget will go furthest. Highlighted rows are within 25% of the best result.

Last season's spend and clicks for each Google campaign, alongside the share of visits that became an enquiry on that campaign's own landing page.

Sections 6 and 7 compare audiences and campaigns. This is the same season read one level further down, at the individual ad: which format, which picture and which words produced the enquiries. Everything is compared against its own kind, prospecting against prospecting and a Google line against the other lines it ran beside, because the audience and the search matter more to the result than the ad does.

Cost per enquiry by the kind of ad, and the share of the budget each kind carried.

Every one of them a still photograph. The figure on each is what an enquiry cost through that ad.

Three sets of text ran against the same audiences all season, so they compare directly.

Text 1 was the cheapest at both stages, and on prospecting it is clear of the other two by 21%. It is the plainest of the three, a straight invitation with no emoji and no list of activities, and that is the shape worth writing more of. On remarketing all three finish within 6% of each other, so with people who already know the brand the choice of text matters much less than the picture beside it.

Google builds each ad line by line, so a line can only be judged against the other lines it was competing with in the same ad group, on the same searches. Each line below ran in at least four ad groups.

By design, the winter campaign runs only through the coldest months. It reaches people in the coldest cities, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto in Canada and Denver and New York in the US, with a simple message: swap the snow for Belize. It ran from late January into the spring.

Alongside the evergreen campaigns, each of these has evidence behind it.

Refinements to campaigns that are already working, each based on last season's results or on the platforms' own guidance.

A few things only Island Expeditions can help with, each of which would sharpen the plan.

Four campaigns that run all year. Two find new people, two come back to people who already know the brand. All four optimise for the same thing, a completed enquiry on the landing page.

How locations are set. The adventure travel audiences run across the whole of the US and Canada. The outdoor brand audiences and the remarketing audiences focus on the core states and provinces where those audiences have performed best, so each audience reaches the places it works hardest.

The creative is built as a library rather than as fixed ads. Each ad pairs one video or image with one of three text sets, and Meta serves whichever combination works best for the person seeing it, in the right shape for wherever it appears.

Paused for the summer by design, and ready to switch back on. Its own audiences and creative, on its own landing page.

Three layers. The two Targeted campaigns chase trip searches, broken into ad groups so the ad text matches the search. High intent keywords concentrates on the searches closest to a booking. The two Branded campaigns hold the top of the page when someone searches for Island Expeditions by name. Landing Page Traffic is a Performance Max campaign placing one set of assets across all of Google's inventory.

The targeted search campaigns cover the core US states and Canadian provinces. High intent keywords and Performance Max run across the whole of both countries, so the searches closest to booking are caught wherever they happen.

Most Google search ads are responsive: several headlines and descriptions are supplied, and Google assembles the combination most likely to win each auction. The two branded campaigns also still run Google's earlier fixed-format text ads, which carry a large share of their clicks. Every live line is below.

One asset group, Unbounce PPC page, feeding Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Display from a single set of images and text.

Each campaign points at its own page, which is what makes a conversion rate per campaign possible rather than one number for the whole account.

Month by month, following the same shape as last year: building through the autumn, peaking across November to February while the booking window is open, then stepping back once the season closes at the end of March. $45,500 across the twelve months, $35,000 of it inside the season. The split between the platforms is covered in section 11.

Good progress since September. Google Analytics is connected, the trip photographs that led to an error page now open their trips, and 24 of the 28 blank trip pages now forward to the full trip. What remains is below, most important first, with the detail in the sections that follow.

• Working
  The sitemap points at the right website. In June every one of its 829 addresses pointed at the old hosting server.
• Working
  Structured data is on every page. In June there was none anywhere on the site.
• Working
  The old blog addresses redirect correctly. All 21 tested on 13 October land on the right post. This protects the links from National Geographic, Outside and other press coverage.
• Working
  Images are modern and properly sized: most are in WebP format, with responsive sizes and set dimensions on nearly all of them.
• Working
  The homepage has one clear headline, "Small-Group Belize Adventure Tours, Beyond the Ordinary", and it is the first thing to appear on a phone and on a desktop.

This was the most significant item in September, and it is well under way. Each trip had a second copy at a newer address that displayed no content, and that was the copy listed for Google to index. 24 of the 28 now forward to the full trip page, which is exactly the right fix. The rest of this section is what remains.

The title of a page is the blue headline Google shows in its results. On the new site, every page title ends with the same sentence: "Island Expeditions operates active vacation adventure travel and tours in Belize Central America since 1987". The homepage's title in Google currently reads:

• Priority
  112 of 112 pages carry the sentence, and titles average 137 characters. Google displays roughly the first 60, so on the homepage the only distinctive word it shows is “Home”.
• Priority
  The same sentence is still being used as the company’s name in the site’s structured data, so Google and AI tools are told the business is called by that whole sentence rather than “Island Expeditions”.
• Worth doing
  94 of 112 pages have no description, the two lines of text under the title in Google’s results, so Google writes its own from whatever text it finds. That is down from 105 in September: the About Us and Book Your Trip pages now have them, and the trip pages are the place to add them next.
• Worth doing
  Trip pages have no main heading. None of the 18 has one: the trip name is set as a smaller heading, which weakens the clearest signal of what each page is about.

Two things matter here: the links inside the current pages should reach the pages they name, and every old address that earned links or rankings should forward to its new equivalent. The first is nearly all done; the second has been handled well for the blog and the trips, and the activity pages are what remain.

• Done
  The four Getaway photographs on Short Trips and Getaways now open their trips: Lighthouse Getaway 3 Night, Lighthouse Getaway 4 Night, Glover’s Getaway 3 Night and Glover’s Getaway 4 Night.
• Done
  The Cayo Caves and Temples Extension photograph on Inland Excursions now opens the trip rather than the category page.
• Worth doing
  One photograph still opens a category page. Reef and Rainforest Explorer, on the Classic All Inclusive Trips page, leads to the Inland Excursions page rather than the trip. Pointing it at the address its trip name already uses fixes it.
• Working
  The rest of that path is sound. Every link inside the homepage, the seven trip category pages and the trip pages was retested on 13 October, and that photograph is the only one that does not reach the page it names.

• Worth doing
  The activity pages are the main gap. The previous site had a page for each activity, including stand-up paddleboarding, scuba diving, caving, the Maya world, birding and hiking. Thirteen still show an error, and these are the pages that answer searches such as “scuba diving in Belize”. Several already have a page on the new site to forward to: birding and sea kayak sailing under About Us, Activities, and caving under Incredible Belize.
• Worth doing
  The sea kayaking page forwards to the general About page, and the new site has no dedicated sea kayaking page. In June that page ranked second for Belize kayaking searches. Given the company’s roots in sea kayaking, a dedicated page is worth restoring, and in the meantime the new Paddling in Belize page is a closer match than the About page.
• Worth doing
  Eleven old trip addresses show an error, including solo travel, groups and schools, Belize on a budget, combining trips and the special departures with guest instructors. Groups and Schools now has its own page, the obvious home for its old address, and the rest can forward to the nearest trip or the trips page. Two more, the yoga retreat and the Maya Moho River Expedition, forward to the Contact page, which is fine if those trips are no longer offered.
• Minor
  Five links on the kayak rental packing page lead to an error page: three to old “clients” addresses and two to PDF files from the previous site. The trip preparation guide is already on the new site at a different address, so that one is a quick repoint.

Measured on 13 October in a controlled test, on a throttled mid-range phone connection and on a desktop, three runs each.

Google's target is 2.5 seconds for the main image or headline. The homepage headline appears first and quickly; what keeps a phone busy for 41 seconds is further down the page.

• Worth doing
  A background video further down the homepage starts downloading as soon as the page opens. It sits well below the first screen, yet it downloads about 11MB in the first 15 seconds, on a phone as well as a desktop, before anyone has scrolled to it. On a phone that is more than everything else on the page put together. Loading it only when a visitor scrolls near it, or showing a still image on phones, would free up the page.
• Worth doing
  The six photographs in the homepage slideshow are full size, 2.2MB together, and phones receive the same versions as a large desktop screen. Phone-sized versions would lighten the first screen.
• Worth doing
  The main photograph on trip pages takes about 11 seconds to appear on a phone. It is set as a background, so the browser finds it late. Loading it early, or as an ordinary image, would bring it in line with the homepage.
• Worth doing
  Around 30 style files load before a page can display (34 on the homepage), up from 9 on the previous site. Combining them is a standard setting in most WordPress speed tools.
• Working
  Images elsewhere are in good shape: modern formats, responsive sizes and set dimensions, and the layout does not shift as the page loads.

Structured data is hidden code that tells Google and AI tools what a page is and what it sells. It is what produces prices, ratings and trip details in search results, and it is how AI assistants understand a business.

• Working
  Every page carries it, up from none in June.
• Working
  AI tools are all welcome. The site’s robots file allows every crawler, including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI crawlers.
• Worth doing
  The llms.txt file is not currently available. In September the site had one, written for the brand. Its address now shows the message “llms.txt has not been generated on this site yet”, so it needs switching back on or regenerating in the website’s SEO settings. When it is, pointing it at the current trip pages, with a one-line summary of each, would make it far more useful to AI tools.
• Worth doing
  Trip pages do not include their price, duration or dates in the code, even though the pages show them. This is the single most valuable addition for a tour operator: it is what lets Google and AI assistants show “from US$3,999, 13 days” against a trip.
• Minor
  The questions on the FAQ page and the guest testimonials on the homepage are already written and could be marked up so AI tools can quote them directly.
• Minor
  22 of the 32 blog posts sampled show the same date, 5 April 2018, from the move, rather than when they were really written.

• Working
  The About page tells the story well: the 1987 founding, named guides, and more than 50 guest testimonials. The TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice award is shown on the homepage.
• Working
  Trip pages show real prices and forward departure dates through 2027, with a clear path to booking.
• Worth doing
  No reviews appear on the trip pages themselves, which is where a buyer is deciding. The testimonials sit on the homepage and About page only.
• Minor
  Blog posts are all credited to a single website account rather than to the guides and staff who know the trips, who are already introduced on the About page.
• Minor
  The contact page lists only the Canadian mailing address, not the Belize office in Dangriga, and it has no map.
• Minor
  The TripAdvisor link points at the Glover’s Reef basecamp listing rather than an Island Expeditions page, and the two phone numbers appear in different formats on the contact page.

This review was carried out from the public website and the two ad accounts. The following were not available and would add to it.

Prepared by Echo Digital for Island Expeditions, September 2026. Campaign settings, ad copy and creative pulled from the Meta and Google Ads accounts. Campaign performance covers 2025-10-01 to 2026-03-31. Landing page figures are the totals recorded by each page since it was built. The website section was rechecked on the live site on 13 October 2026.