Google ROAS
12.5x
Category average, range 6.7x to 22.8x. Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026.
Prepared for The Star Gold Coast
Prepared for The Star Gold Coast
What we found inside The Star Gold Coast's acquisition engine.
Your site sells one thing brilliantly: a whole destination in a single building. Casino, dining, shows, luxury rooms. The category around you sells the opposite, and that gap is your opening.
We spent an afternoon in your world, Jessie, then held it up against a $677M category to see where the money is actually going.
$25Mspent by Hotels / Resorts
across the whole category
across the whole category
The thing that caught our eye
You sit in the quietest room in a very loud category.
Of $677M spent in Travel & Tourism (Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025), Hotels and Resorts accounted for roughly $25M. That is less than 4% of the category. Tour operators spent $183M. OTAs and booking platforms spent $126M. Airlines spent $107M.
Here is the twist for The Star. You are not really a hotel. You are a destination that also has rooms. But you compete for attention in the least-funded corner of the category, while the platforms selling your beds spend seven times more to intercept the traveller first.
We've solved thisWe build direct-demand engines that pull bookings back off the OTAs and onto your own site.
Where the money goes
The category is fighting over the trip. You should be selling the reason for it.
Split the $677M by who is spending it and a clear picture emerges. The dominant players sell transport and transactions. Almost nobody is funding the "what do I actually do when I get there" story, which is the exact thing your site leads with.
Hotels / Resorts is the smallest funded slice besides Other · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
Want to see how much of your current demand is being taxed by OTA commission before it ever reaches you?
Just hit replyA category quirk worth pricing in
The category peaks in January and empties out in December.
Travel spend across the category tops out in January and bottoms in December (Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025). For a Gold Coast destination that lives on summer, event weekends and school holidays, that rhythm matters. The question is whether your media weight is following the booking window or the stay window.
Peak January, trough December · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
Travel & Tourism, by the numbers
The channels the category still leans on.
$208M
still going to Newspapers, the single largest channel in the category
Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
$193M
in Digital & Social, running a close second and where intent is cheapest to catch
Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
$146M
on Television, still the reach lever for destination brand building
Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
$78M
in Out of Home, natural territory for a physical destination like The Star
Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
The channel split
A category still spending like it's a decade ago.
Newspapers pulling the largest single share tells you something. A lot of this category's money is buying reach, not measurable booking demand. That leaves the performance channels less crowded than the headline spend suggests, which is where a destination with three products and a data-rich loyalty base should be dominant.
Digital & Social sits second despite the category's print habit · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
One honest comparison
What a dollar tends to return in this category.
These are our own first-party performance benchmarks across Australian and New Zealand travel accounts, trailing twelve months. They are directional, not spend-weighted, but they are numbers a competitor cannot pull off Google.
Meta ROAS
13.6x
Category average, range 7.3x to 21.9x. Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026.
Google cost per purchase
$19.41
Range $6.79 to $39.91. The spread is the story. Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026.
"The OTAs are spending $126M a year to rent your own guests back to you. The cheapest room The Star owns is the one booked direct."
Our read on where The Star's margin is leaking
Three things we'd look at first
Where we'd start, specifically.
01
Win the booking before the OTA does
With OTA and booking platforms spending $126M in the category (as at Dec 2025), you are almost certainly paying commission on demand you generated. We'd build a direct-booking search and PMax layer that intercepts "Gold Coast" intent before Booking.com and WebJet cash it in.
Track recordGoogle ROAS averaging 12.5x across our travel accounts (Sunny first-party, as at Jun 2026).
02
Split the one headline into three audiences
Casino, dining and accommodation are three different buyers with three different intents. Right now they share one message. We'd segment the Meta and search build so the show-goer, the diner and the weekend-stay guest each see the reason that moves them.
Track recordMeta cost per purchase ranges $8.54 to $83.63. Audience precision is what closes that gap (Sunny first-party, as at Jun 2026).
03
Buy against the booking window, not the stay
The category peaks in January, but Gold Coast bookings are made weeks earlier. We'd map your media weight to when the decision is made, not when the guest arrives, so you're in market while intent is forming rather than after it's spent.
Track recordOut of Home ($78M category spend) plus retargeting is a natural pairing for a physical destination.
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 a dated category dataset. The real work starts when we can see your booking data, your loyalty file and your actual channel returns.
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 storiesWhat this is actually worth
Here's the size of the prize.
$340k
Indicative annual margin recovered by shifting bookings direct
If a meaningful share of your rooms currently books through OTAs, the commission on those stays is pure margin leaving the building. Move even a slice of that volume to direct at category ROAS levels and the figure compounds fast across a year.
Directional only. We would size it properly against your real OTA mix, room revenue and current channel returns, all of which we would confirm on the call.