Prepared for Grand Pacific Tours

What we found inside Grand Pacific Tours' acquisition engine.

You sell a considered, ten thousand dollar holiday to an audience who researches for months before they book. That is one of the most winnable profiles in the entire travel category, and one of the easiest to under-serve with the wrong channel mix.

Haylee, this is an outside read built from your site and category data. No access, no dashboard, just what a scan of the numbers tells us before we ever talk.

$183Mspent by tour operators
and agencies last year

The thing that caught our eye

You compete in the biggest, loudest segment in the category.

Tour Operator and Agency is the single largest slice of the $677M travel category, at $183M, ahead of airlines, cruise lines and the OTAs (Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025). That is Flight Centre, Scenic and TripADeal all buying attention in the same space you do.

Here is the asymmetry we would lean on. Most of that money chases broad, multi-destination intent. You sell one country, coach touring, at a $9,809 to $12,109 twin share price point. That focus is a weapon if the media is pointed at the right people.

We've solved thisAcross our travel accounts we have driven north of 12x ROAS on Google.

Where the category money sits

The pool you are swimming in.

Before we talk about your slice, look at how the $677M splits by advertiser type. It tells you who you are really bidding against for the same considered traveller.

Tour operators and agencies outspend every other segment. Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025.

The channel read

The category's biggest bet is also its hardest to measure.

Newspapers still take the largest share of category spend at $208M, with Digital and Social close behind at $193M (Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025). Our read: that print weight exists because the coach touring buyer skews older, and the category assumes print is where they live. But a $10,000 decision is researched online for months first, and print cannot tell you who moved.

Digital is one campaign away from being the category's number one channel. Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025.

If print is a big line in your budget, we can show you what the same money returns when it is measurable. Ten minutes, no deck.

Let's talk

A timing quirk worth money

You sell winter dreaming, not summer travel.

Category ad spend peaks in January and bottoms out in December (Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025). But your departures run September through May, and a $10k tour is booked six to nine months out. That means the intent you need to capture is forming while the category is either shouting over the top of everyone in January or gone quiet in the cold months when your buyer is actually dreaming of escape.

The gap between when the category spends and when your booking is decided is where cheaper reach lives. Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025.

Head to head

Who else is buying your buyer.

These are the advertisers closest to your offer. The point is not to match their weight. It is to be unmissable to the narrow slice of the market that specifically wants a New Zealand coach holiday, while they spread across every destination and product.

Share of voice in the tour and OTA space. Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025.

One honest comparison

The economics of a $10,000 basket.

This is why your category is so leverage-rich. Put our delivered acquisition cost next to your average order value and the maths does the arguing.

Cost per purchase, our travel accounts

Under $20

Sunny first-party benchmark, Google, as at Jun 2026

Your booking value, twin share

$9,809+

From your Signature Hot Deals pricing

Return on ad spend we have driven

North of 12x

Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026

What you only learn from the inside

Things we know that aren't on any dashboard.

Brochure orders are gold

Someone who orders a physical brochure is your highest-intent signal, and they convert weeks or months later. Most operators never retarget them. That audience alone is worth building.

Last click lies at $10k

With a six to nine month consideration window, last-click attribution hands all the credit to the final branded search and buries the video or display that actually planted the idea. Budgets get cut in the wrong place.

The booker isn't always the traveller

Plenty of coach tours are researched and paid for by an adult child booking for their parents. That is a completely different audience to target, and a different message, and almost nobody segments for it.

Port of departure is a geo lever

Your air-inclusive pricing shifts by capital city. That means creative and offers can be geo-tuned to the real landed price a Perth buyer sees versus a Melbourne one, instead of one flat message.

Solo travellers are underpriced demand

You already run dedicated SOLO departures. Solo travel intent is rising faster than the category media reflects, and the single supplement means those seats carry real margin. It deserves its own campaign, not a footnote.

Reviews are your cheapest ad unit

A 9.41 out of 10 experience score and ten-out-of-ten testimonials are trust assets sitting unused in paid media. Social proof in the ad, not just on the page, is what closes a first-time NZ buyer.

Three things we'd look at first

Where we'd start, specifically.

Rebuild attribution for a long window

Before touching spend, we would set up measurement that respects a six to nine month path to a $10k booking, so you stop starving the channels that start the journey.

Track recordWe have driven cost per purchase under $20 across travel accounts.

Turn brochure and site intent into audiences

Brochure orders, itinerary comparisons and departure searches are all high-intent signals. We would package them into retargeting pools that keep working through the whole consideration window.

Track recordNorth of 12x ROAS delivered on Google for travel clients.

Point digital at the seasonal gap

Capture intent while the category is quiet in the colder booking months, so you own the dreaming phase instead of paying peak prices in the January scrum.

Track recordSingle-digit CPMs on Meta across our travel and tourism accounts.

This is a snapshot, not the plan

A real plan is built on better data than a quick scan.

Everything above came from your public site and category data. With your own booking and margin numbers, the picture sharpens fast.

Nielsen Ad IntelCategory & competitor ad-spend tracking

Roy MorganAudience & consumer profiling

Google Premier PartnerTop tier of Google agencies

Meta Business PartnerVerified platform access

This briefing is what we can see from the outside. Imagine what we'd build with the data on the inside.

Proof, not promises

Check out our success stories.

We've done this for travel & tourism brands right across Australia. See the campaigns, and the results, for yourself.

Check out our success stories

What this is actually worth

Here's the size of the prize.

$1M+

Incremental booking value from measurable digital acquisition

The lever is your basket size. At roughly $10,000 per person twin share, a single incremental couple is worth around $20,000 in bookings. Against our delivered cost per purchase of under $20 and ROAS north of 12x, capturing even one additional couple a week from tightened, well-measured digital puts you north of $1M in incremental annual booking value. That is the first number we would chase.

We'll tighten this against your actuals and your margin. The figure moves; the opportunity does not.

One briefing at a time, built by hand

The next step

Worth a reply, Haylee?

If any of this landed, the fastest next step is a short conversation about what your actual booking data would change in the numbers above.

Just hit reply

or just reply to the email this came in, I read every one.

This isn't a pitch in disguise. Worst case you get a sharper read on where your media is leaking and keep it, no obligation.

✓
The attribution gap
Why a long consideration window is quietly mispricing your channels.
✓
The seasonal play
Owning the dreaming months instead of paying the January premium.
✓
The prize, on your numbers
We plug in your basket and margin and see if $1M+ holds.