Everything You Need to Know About Google Analytics GA4

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Google’s Universal Analytics is officially gone—and if you’re a tourism business, that means it’s time to start fresh with GA4..

Whether you run a destination marketing organization, a tour company, or a charming B&B, understanding how visitors interact with your website is essential. GA4 is your new go-to tool for tracking user behaviour—but it works very differently than Google’s old Universal Analytics (UA). If you haven’t fully switched over to GA4 yet or haven’t set it up correctly, this guide is for you.

This article will walk you through what’s changed, what GA4 can do for your tourism business, and what you need to do next.

Universal Analytics is Gone: What This Means for You

Google officially stopped processing Universal Analytics data on July 1, 2023, and as of July 1, 2024, your old UA data can no longer be accessed. If you didn’t download your reports before then, unfortunately, that historical data is now gone.

If you haven’t set up GA4—or if it was set up but not configured properly—you’re essentially starting from scratch. The good news? GA4 is powerful, flexible, and (once you get the hang of it) a better fit for today’s digital landscape.

What’s GA4 and Why Does It Matter for Tourism Businesses?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s analytics platform—and it’s a big shift from the older Universal Analytics. Instead of simply tracking page views and sessions, GA4 focuses on events, which is used to describe and capture every interaction a visitor has with your site. That includes clicking a “Book Now” button, scrolling through your experiences, watching a destination video, or downloading a travel guide.

This data gives you a more detailed picture of how visitors are interacting with your website.

Why this matters for tourism businesses:

• You can see where people drop off during the booking or inquiry process, so you know where to improve.
• You can track which social media or ad campaigns are sending the most engaged visitors.
• You can view web and app data together, which is helpful if you offer both online and mobile booking.
• You can identify which pages are getting the most interaction, like blogs, itineraries, or seasonal deals, and use that insight to guide future marketing.

Google’s GA4 helps you understand not just how many people visited, but what they did and how you can further improve your marketing.

Key GA4 Features

1. Event-Based Tracking (beyond pageviews and Sessions)

GA4‘s event-based tracking records individual actions beyond just how many people landed on your website to tell you what they were actually doing while on your site—like clicking a “Book Now” button, scrolling through your homepage, watching a video, or downloading a brochure. These actions are all tracked as “events.”

GA4 automatically tracks some basic events—like page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, and video engagement—with no extra setup (these are called “enhanced measurement” events).

But if you want to track custom actions specific to your business, like clicks on a booking button or downloads of a travel guide, you’ll need a bit of extra setup. This can usually be done with Google Tag Manager or help from a web developer.

This gives you much deeper insight into how visitors are engaging with your content, so you can focus on what’s working and fix what’s not.

2. Cross-Platform Tracking

Today’s travellers often move between devices. Someone might discover your tourism business on Instagram, browse your site on their phone, and later complete a booking on their laptop. With older analytics tools, that might look like two separate users, but GA4 connects the dots.

With cross-platform tracking, GA4 helps you see the entire customer journey, whether visitors interact with your website, mobile site, or even your app. It does this using something called data streams, which are like digital pipelines that bring information from your different platforms into one shared dashboard.

To make this work, you’ll need to set up a data stream for each platform you want to track. Most tourism businesses will only need a web data stream, but if you also have an iOS or Android app, your developer can help connect those through Google’s Firebase platform. Once connected, GA4 can link actions across devices—so you can see how users move from discovery to booking, even if it happens over multiple sessions or screens.

3. Stronger Privacy by Design

With more people concerned about how their data is used and with privacy laws like GDPR, Canada’s PIPEDA, and cookie consent banners becoming the norm—GA4 was designed to protect user privacy while still giving you useful insights.

Unlike the older version of Google’s Universal Analytics, GA4 doesn’t store full IP addresses and is built to adapt to evolving privacy standards. It’s better at working with cookie consent tools and gives users more control over their data.

Even when someone opts out of tracking, like by declining cookies or using an iPhone with strict privacy settings, GA4 uses data modelling to help fill in the blanks. That means you still get a high-level view of your website performance, such as how many people visited or which pages were most popular, without collecting personally identifiable information.

This balance between data and privacy means you can still make informed decisions about your marketing and website, without compromising trust.

4. Custom Reports and Explorations

Every tourism business is different, and GA4 recognizes that. That’s why it gives you – not just generic metrics – but more flexibility to create reports that focus on what matters to you..

Along with the default reports that GA4 automatically generates—like traffic, engagement, and demographics—there’s also a powerful tool called Explorations. It lets you build custom, interactive reports to dig deeper into specific questions or data trends. Want to see how long visitors are spending on your “Plan Your Trip” page? Or which blog posts are most likely to lead to bookings or newsletter signups? Explorations make that possible.

These reports let you track patterns over time, filter by location or device, and even compare different user groups—like first-time visitors vs. returning guests. It’s all designed to help you understand behaviour, spot opportunities, and make smarter marketing decisions.

You don’t need to be a data expert to get started—there are easy templates and drag-and-drop tools to help guide you.

5. Shorter Data Retention by Default

Whereas data stored on Google’s Universal Analytics never expires, by default, GA4 stores just two months of data,. Fortunately, you can extend this to 14 months or download your analytics in a CSV file.

To adjust your data retention, follow these steps:

• • Log into your Google Analytics account.
    ● Go to the admin
    ● Under the property tab, click on “Data Settings”
    ● Under the drop-down, select “Data Retention”
    ● Adjust the drop-down from 2 months to 14 months
    ● Click Save

Limited Email Reporting

Unlike Universal Analytics, GA4 doesn’t currently support built-in scheduled email reports. That means you can’t automatically send weekly or monthly updates directly from the GA4 interface, but the platform changes regularly.

However, you still have options:

• You can manually export reports from GA4 as a PDF or CSV to share with your team.
• For more automated reporting, you can use Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) to create live dashboards and set up scheduled email reports from there. This is a great solution if you want a visual summary of performance, customized to your tourism business needs.

So while GA4 is a bit limited in this area, it’s still possible to get the reporting you need, especially when paired with Looker Studio.