Remarketing to guests who did not complete their booking

How to build, in GA4, Google Ads, Meta and TikTok, an audience of guests who started a booking in the widget and did not complete it, whichever stage you pick.

Whoever books through the widget leaves an event at each stage: they search for availability, see the details form, submit it and, if the business applies a cancellation policy, sign it. Whoever completes the booking also fires the conversion. The difference between the two, people who reached a stage and did not convert, is the remarketing audience, and it is built with the events Restoo Connect already sends, with no BigQuery and no code.

This guide is for businesses and agencies that want to recover those bookings. It explains which event marks each stage on each platform, how to set the audience up in GA4 and Google Ads, in Google Tag Manager, in Meta and in TikTok, and what is particular about the cancellation policy.

Bidding & Optimization

Which conversions to hand to bidding, and how audiences fit in.

Event mappings

What each Restoo event becomes on each platform.

How the audience is built

The rule is the same on every platform and at every stage: include whoever reached the stage you pick and exclude whoever completed the booking. The booking conversion only fires once the booking is created, or signed if it carries a cancellation policy, so the difference between the two conditions is exactly the people who dropped off along the way.

You do not need to know why they did not continue. Whether they closed the tab, found no availability or the card failed, the conversion is missing in every case, and that is all the audience needs.

The audience is per person, not per booking. Someone who leaves a booking half-done and completes another one later drops out of the audience, which is what you want in remarketing.

Pick the stage

Later stages leave a smaller audience with more intent to book. Pick the one that fits the message: whoever searched for availability gets a reminder of the business; whoever left a booking half-done is invited to book again.

Reached…	GA4 and GTM	Meta Pixel	TikTok Pixel
Saw the booking start	restoo_booking_start_viewed	RestooBookingStartViewed	RestooBookingStartViewed
Searched for availability	search	Search	Search
Found no availability	restoo_booking_no_availability_viewed	RestooBookingNoAvailabilityViewed	RestooBookingNoAvailabilityViewed
Saw the details form	restoo_booking_details_form_viewed	ViewContent	ViewContent
Started filling in the form	form_start	RestooBookingDetailsFormStarted	RestooBookingDetailsFormStarted
Saw the cancellation policy	restoo_booking_cp_viewed	RestooBookingCpViewed	RestooBookingCpViewed
Acknowledged the cancellation policy	restoo_booking_cp_acknowledged	RestooBookingCpAcknowledged	RestooBookingCpAcknowledged

Each row includes whoever reached at least that stage and did not book, so whoever dropped off later is in the rows above too. To narrow it down to a single stage, also exclude the next stage’s event. The last row is the exception and needs nothing: there the next stage is the conversion itself, because on a booking with a policy it only arrives if the guest signs it.

Every stage reaches all four platforms; each payload is in the event mappings. With the gtm destination they are also in the dataLayer, under the names in the “GA4 and GTM” column, and your tags can carry any stage to any platform: its tab explains how. They reach the OpenAI Pixel too, but ChatGPT Ads does not build audiences from pixel events — its audiences are uploaded lists — so this guide does not apply to that destination.

Three rows have a catch:

• ViewContent on Meta and TikTok is also sent when a guest views an experience’s detail. The form’s ViewContent carries content_name with the business name and the detail’s does not: when defining the audience, add that parameter to keep only the form.
• No availability is not an abandonment: the guest wanted to book and could not. The event carries the reason (availability_outcome), the date and the party size they searched for, so the natural message is alternative dates or the waiting list.
• The cancellation policy has its own section below: the half-done booking exists and gets canceled on its own, so the message cannot assume the table is still held.

Exclude whoever completed the booking

The exclusion is the same for every row: the booking conversion. Each booking created fires exactly one of the two, depending on whether it is born confirmed or pending, and both must be excluded: a booking pending confirmation or on a waiting list is also complete for the guest, and telling them they did not finish their booking would be a mistake.

Booking completed as…	GA4 and GTM	Meta Pixel	TikTok Pixel
Confirmed booking (booking_created with status CONFIRMED)	qualify_lead	Schedule	Schedule
Pending booking: request or waiting list (REQUESTED or PENDING_WAIT_LIST_BOOKING)	generate_lead	Lead	SubmitForm

Google Ads receives no diagnostic events from Restoo Connect, so its audience is built in GA4 and shared with the linked account: that is in the steps of the GA4 tab.

Modifying an existing booking never enters these audiences: when editing, Restoo Connect forwards neither the stage events nor the conversion, so it adds and excludes nobody. See the event mappings.

Configuring each platform

On every platform the audience is defined with the same time window. Start with 14 days: the guest was looking for a specific date, and once that date has passed the ad no longer recovers that booking, so a long window keeps people in the audience whose date passed weeks ago. A very short one leaves out guests who book ahead and makes it harder to reach the minimum size Google Ads requires. Go down to 7 days if your guests book for the same week; go up to 30 if the audience does not reach the minimum.

GA4 and Google Ads

The audience is built in GA4, whether it receives the events through the direct ga4 destination or through your GTM tags, and shared with the linked Google Ads account. Google Ads receives no diagnostic events, so the audience cannot be built directly in Ads.

1. Cover the advertising consent

   A property that exports audiences to Google Ads feeds advertising. With the direct ga4 destination, that has to be declared in your Restoo account: from then on GA4 only receives events from visitors who also accept advertising cookies. With GTM it is your GA4 tag that has to honor the advertising signals of your Consent Mode. See what each destination requires.

2. Link GA4 to Google Ads

   Link the property to the Ads account and leave personalized advertising enabled on the link. Without it the audience is not exported.

3. Create the audience

   In Admin → Audiences → New audience → Create a custom audience:

   • Include users who triggered the event of the stage you picked in the table, for example restoo_booking_cp_viewed.
   • Exclude users who triggered generate_lead or qualify_lead, the two conversions in the exclusion table. GA4 offers two exclusions: temporary removes the user while they meet the condition, permanent removes them for good if they ever met it. Choose temporary: with permanent, anyone who completes a booking once would stay out even if they leave another one half-done later.
4. Set the membership duration

   GA4 allows up to 540 days. Set 14 days and enable reset on new activity, which restarts the duration every time the user meets the inclusion condition: whoever leaves another booking half-done stays in the audience for another 14 days.

5. Use it in Google Ads

   The audience shows up in the linked account’s Audience Manager within hours. Add it as a segment to the remarketing campaign, or as a signal in Performance Max, and keep the minimum size in mind.

Google Tag Manager

With the gtm destination, Restoo Connect leaves every event in window.dataLayer and sends nothing to any platform: your tags do. The audience is set up on whichever platform you use, following its tab; this is what changes along the way.

1. Forward the events to each platform

   Each platform needs the event of the stage you picked and the two conversions in the exclusion table. If your container already forwards Restoo’s events, there is nothing to add. If not, one custom event trigger per event, named after the event arriving in the dataLayer — the “GA4 and GTM” column of the tables — and one tag per platform on each trigger. For the two conversions a single trigger with the regular expression generate_lead|qualify_lead will do.

2. Give Meta and TikTok the exact signal

   Their direct destinations already send every stage under its custom name, so if you measure through GTM what you do here is reproduce it: a custom event tag — for example RestooBookingCpViewed — on the stage’s trigger, under the same name the direct destination uses, so the audience works whichever route you came by. For the conversions use their standard events, Lead and Schedule (SubmitForm and Schedule on TikTok), so the exclusion in their tab still holds.

3. Apply consent in your tags

   Restoo Connect pushes the events as soon as consent is known; your tags, with your container’s Consent Mode, are what sends them to each platform. Since these audiences feed advertising, the tags have to honor the advertising signals: see gtm and the consent your tags apply.

4. One path to each destination

   If GTM already sends the events to a platform, do not also enable its direct destination in Restoo: every event would arrive twice. See avoiding duplicate conversions.

Meta

The audience is built from the events the pixel receives, through the direct metaPixel destination or through your GTM tags.

1. Create the audience

   In Audiences → Create audience → Custom audience → Website, with the pixel declared in your Restoo account as the source.

2. Include the stage

   People who performed the event of the stage you picked in the last 14 days: Search, ViewContent or the custom event in its row of the table, such as RestooBookingCpViewed. With ViewContent, add the content_name parameter to keep the form and not an experience’s detail.

3. Exclude whoever completed the booking

   Exclude people who performed Lead or Schedule in the same period.

4. Check that the events show up

   Custom events appear in the dropdown once the pixel has received them at least once. If the one you need is missing, check that the destination or the tag is enabled and that someone has already reached that stage.

TikTok

The audience is built from the events the pixel receives, through the direct tiktokPixel destination or through your GTM tags.

1. Create the audience

   In Assets → Audiences → Create audience → Custom Audience → Website Traffic, with the pixel declared in your Restoo account.

2. Include the stage

   The event of the stage you picked in the last 14 days: Search, ViewContent or the custom event in its row of the table, such as RestooBookingCpViewed. With ViewContent, filter by the content_name parameter to keep the form.

3. Exclude whoever completed the booking

   Exclude people with the SubmitForm and Schedule events in the same period. TikTok shows SubmitForm as Lead in its reports.

4. Turn on Auto-Refresh

   So the audience keeps refreshing itself with new events.

The cancellation policy, a case of its own

If the business applies a cancellation policy, with a guarantee or a prepayment, submitting the form does not complete the booking: the widget shows the policy and the guest has a deadline to sign it, that is, to accept it and validate their card. Until then the booking stays pending; if they do not sign in time, it is canceled and fires no conversion. It is the last stage before the conversion: the guest had already chosen a date, a time and a party size and filled in their details.

In GA4 and GTM the signal is direct: restoo_booking_cp_viewed is sent when the widget shows the policy. If you prefer a narrower audience, restoo_booking_cp_acknowledged marks whoever also ticked “I have read and accept the cancellation policy”.

On Meta and TikTok the signal is just as direct, under the stage’s custom name: RestooBookingCpViewed, or RestooBookingCpAcknowledged for the narrower audience. Excluding both booking conversions, what remains is whoever saw the policy and did not sign it.

Since the pending booking is already canceled by the time the ad arrives, the guest has to book again: the message cannot assume their table is still held.

Other uses of the same audiences

• Suppression. Exclude the booking conversion — and Contact for phone-first venues — from prospecting campaigns, so you stop paying to reach guests who already booked. They are the same events as in the exclusion table, used as a negative list.
• Lookalikes. Seed Meta and TikTok lookalikes and Google similar audiences from guests who completed the booking, not from those who filled in the form.
• Remarketing by experience. To retarget whoever viewed a specific experience and did not pick it: include view_item in GA4 and GTM, or ViewContent with that experience’s content_ids in Meta and TikTok, and exclude the selection — select_item in GA4 and GTM, RestooBookingItemSelected on Meta and TikTok — or the booking conversion. Experiences are identified by ID, not by name: see what Restoo deliberately omits.

Match rates improve with customer_identified matching data enabled: login in GA4, Advanced Matching in Meta and identify in TikTok.

Before launching the campaign

Minimum audience size

Google Ads does not serve ads to a segment until it reaches a minimum of active users in the last 30 days:

Google network	Minimum active users
Display, Gmail	100
Search, YouTube	1,000

The later the stage, the harder it is to reach the threshold: an audience of searches gets there before one of unsigned policies. If the audience does not reach it, extend the membership duration to 30 days or pick an earlier stage before giving up on it. Meta and TikTok show the size in the tool itself and warn when it is too small to serve ads.

Consent

These audiences are advertising. Only visitors who granted the advertising signals enter them, and the numbers will be a fraction of the widget’s traffic. Each destination has its own requirements; with the ga4 destination, the property also has to be declared as “also for advertising”.

Official references

Google

• Google Analytics 4 audiences
• Link Google Analytics to Google Ads
• Audience segments and minimum size in Google Ads

Meta

• Create a Custom Audience from website events

TikTok

• Create a Website Traffic audience

Next steps

Bidding & Optimization

Which conversions to hand to bidding, and how audiences fit in.

Consent

What each signal unlocks per destination and how it reaches the widget.