Can I tell which of my adverts and social media posts actually brought me bookings and not just visitors?

Yes, up to a point. When someone arrives at your website from a search engine, a social post or a paid advert, that visit can carry a tag saying where they came from, and if they go on to book, the booking keeps that tag. That means you can see which campaigns brought you paid bookings and what those bookings were worth, not only which ones brought you visitors.

That changes how you spend your money. Two campaigns can send you the same number of visitors while one sells long haul holidays and the other brings people who only ever look at the cheapest one way fares, and the report will show you which is which. You can usually break the figures down by source, by what people actually bought and by month, so a seasonal campaign is judged on its own season rather than on the whole year.

The limits are worth knowing before you lean on it. It can only follow journeys that stay on your website, so a customer who saw your advert and then rang your office, or who came back weeks later on a different phone, may look like they arrived from nowhere. Privacy settings and blocked cookies lose part of the trail as well, and how much detail comes back from the advertising platforms depends on what those platforms choose to share. Treat the numbers as a strong guide rather than an exact count.

A good next step is to make sure every advert, email and social post you publish carries its own tag from now on, then read a full month of bookings by source before you move money from one campaign to another.