The brief
Boatastic hires out yachts and boats for luxury trips, parties and sunset cruises in Dubai. Reach is cheap in that market; real bookings are not. The goal was enquiries from people ready to charter: a WhatsApp conversation, a call or a booking request, at a cost that made sense for a high-ticket service. Meta and Google Ads each had a job to do.
Meta: a 30-day WhatsApp sprint
WhatsApp first. Luxury customers in Dubai book on the messaging app they already use, so the Meta campaign was built around Click-to-WhatsApp, with a pre-filled first message carrying the trip type and date. The team could qualify and close in real time.
High-intent audiences, experience-led creative. Targeting focused on leisure and tourism audiences in and around Dubai, with creative showing the boats and the experience rather than a price.
Tested through the month. New creative angles and offers went live across the 30 days, and the budget followed the ones starting conversations.
In 30 days the campaign reached 179,905 people and started 597 WhatsApp conversations with people ready to book, with landing-page leads coming in at Rs68.69 each (the Meta account is billed in Pakistani rupees). For a luxury category that is a cost per enquiry most accounts never get near.
Google Ads: following the searches
Tested Performance Max, then followed the enquiries. Performance Max went first and found people cheaply, with 724 clicks and 787 video views at AED0.10 a view. Good for reach, but the enquiries were coming from people searching for boat trips, so the budget followed them to search.
Proved the search angle. A first search campaign around luxury and party trips brought 13 leads at AED54.91. That showed which searches turned into bookings.
Rebuilt search around three ad groups. The lead campaign launched in December 2025 split the account into three ad groups, each with its own keywords and ads, and bid on Target CPA so Google aimed for a cost per lead rather than clicks.
Counted every route in. Contact actions, calls from the ads and booking submissions were all tracked as conversions with their own values, so each lead type could be judged separately.
Results
On Meta, 597 WhatsApp conversations in 30 days from 179,905 people reached. On Google, the three-ad-group search campaign brought 111 leads at AED56.47: 94 contact actions, 12 calls and 5 booking submissions. Its click-through rate was 15.23%, more than four times the 3.55% on Performance Max, and across the whole Google account 124 leads came in at AED64.69 each.
In short
Two platforms, two jobs. Meta found people who hadn't thought about a yacht trip yet and got them talking on WhatsApp, 597 of them in a month. Google caught the ones already searching and turned that intent into 111 leads at AED56 each. Together they gave a luxury hire business a steady flow of enquiries worth a sales team's time.