Google ROAS
north of 12x
across our travel & tourism accounts, trailing 12 months
Prepared for Sydney Zoo
Prepared for Sydney Zoo
What we found inside Sydney Zoo's acquisition engine.
You sell a decision made close to the day, in the rain-or-shine window, by a parent in Western Sydney weighing you against Taronga, the aquarium and a free afternoon at home. That is a very different game to the one the travel category is spending its money on.
Sydney's only elephants, one white rhino named Tino, free parking and no hills. You have the product. This is about who sees it, when, and what you optimise them towards.
$677Mspent in the travel & tourism
category last year
category last year
The thing that caught our eye
Almost none of that $677M is fighting you for a Saturday.
The category money belongs to airlines, booking platforms and tour operators. They are buying the flight and the seven-night package, not the family day out at Eastern Creek. Your real rivals, Taronga, the aquariums, the theme parks and a free afternoon in the backyard, do not appear anywhere in this dataset.
That is the opportunity. You are not outgunned by QANTAS in your auction. You are competing for local, high-intent attention that most of this spend ignores.
We've solved thisWe build acquisition around the decision that actually happens, not the category average.
Where the category money goes
The spend chases the booking, not the visit.
Tour operators, OTAs and airlines soak up the bulk of the category. A day-visit attraction sits nowhere near the top of this chart, which tells you the competitive set you are priced against on Meta and Google is thinner than the headline number suggests.
The dollars concentrate on long-haul intent, not local outings · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
When they buy
January runs hot, December runs cold. Both are levers.
The category peaks in January on summer-holiday intent and troughs in December. For a zoo, that maps to a purchase decision made within days of the visit and heavily swayed by weather. Creatures of the Ice Age is exactly the right kind of asset to pull demand into the softer months, but only if it is media-backed as a reason to visit now, not listed as one more thing on the site.
Peak Jan, trough Dec, a same-week decision the whole year · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
We can map your actual demand curve against this category one and show you which weeks are being left on the table.
Just hit replyThe number that changes everything
A single ticket is a transaction. The Unlimited Pass is a business.
Here is our read: the most valuable thing you sell is not a day ticket, it is the 12-month Unlimited Pass, because a pass holder comes back, brings guests, and takes 10% off food, retail and encounters they were always going to buy. One acquired pass holder is worth a multiple of one acquired ticket, and it smooths the weather risk that a single-visit model carries.
Most attraction acquisition engines optimise to the cheapest conversion, which is the day ticket. We would optimise the paid engine towards pass and encounter value, even if the headline cost per purchase looks higher, because the lifetime value is not close.
One honest comparison
What we actually deliver in this category.
These are our own first-party results across travel & tourism accounts, kept deliberately loose. Not promises, but the range we operate in when the offer and the audience are matched properly.
Cost per purchase
under $20
Google, with strong accounts landing well below
Meta CPM
single digits
a local, targeted audience is cheap to reach
Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026. Directional, not spend-weighted.
What you only learn from the inside
Things we know about attractions that aren't on any dashboard.
The weekend rain rule
Wet-weekend forecasts collapse same-day intent. We hold budget back midweek and pour it into the 48 hours before a fine weekend, rather than spending flat and losing money on rainy Saturdays.
Pass, then discount
Discounting day tickets trains the market to wait for the next sale. We would protect ticket price and use the Unlimited Pass as the value story, so the deal builds loyalty instead of eroding it.
The one animal that sells
People do not book "150 species", they book Tino the white rhino, the elephants, the koala encounter. Named, specific creatures out-convert the generic zoo message every time in the creative.
Free parking is a media message
For a Western Sydney family driving in, free parking and no hills or steps remove the two silent objections Taronga can't answer. That belongs in the ad, not buried in a "plan your day" tab.
School holidays start in the mind earlier
Parents plan holiday activities two to three weeks out. The retargeting window that matters opens before the holidays start, not on day one when the calendar is already full.
Encounters are the margin
A camel or giraffe encounter is a high-margin add-on most visitors never see offered until they arrive. Surfacing it in the booking flow, not just on-site, is found revenue.
Three things we'd look at first
Where we'd start, specifically.
01
Optimise to pass value, not ticket volume
Re-point the paid engine at Unlimited Pass and encounter sign-ups, tracking value not just conversions. A higher cost per acquisition is the right trade when the lifetime value is a multiple of a single visit.
Track recordNorth of 12x ROAS across our travel & tourism accounts.
02
Turn Creatures of the Ice Age into the December engine
Use the limited-time event as the reason to visit in the category's softest month, with weather-triggered spend and a hard "ends soon" hook rather than an evergreen listing.
Track recordPurchase costs under $20 on Google when the offer is time-bound.
03
Own the Western Sydney family on Meta
Single-digit CPMs mean your core catchment is cheap to reach. Lead with named animals, free parking and the accessible walk, the exact objections your harbourside rival can't beat.
Track recordSingle-digit CPMs across our travel & tourism Meta accounts.
This is a snapshot, not the plan
A real plan is built on better data than a quick scan.
We can only see your website from out here. With your booking data, pass renewals and weather-matched demand, 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 storiesWhat this is actually worth
Here's the size of the prize.
3x to 5x
the value of a converted visitor, when the engine targets passes over tickets
The working is simple. Assume a single day ticket converts once, while an Unlimited Pass holder returns across 12 months, brings paying guests and takes the 10% discount on food, retail and encounters they buy anyway. On that one assumption, shifting even a modest share of your acquired audience from single tickets to passes multiplies the value of the same media spend, before you count the encounter add-ons most visitors never get offered.
Directional only. The exact number depends on your current pass mix and average spend per visit, which we'd confirm together on the call.
We take on a limited number of travel & tourism accounts
The next 30 minutes
Let's pressure-test the pass economics together.
Bring your renewal and average-spend numbers. We'll show you where the paid engine is leaking value and which weeks the category leaves open for you.
Just hit replyNo deck, no pitch theatre. A working session on your actual numbers.
This isn't a sales call in disguise. If the honest answer is that you're already running this well, we'll tell you and leave you with the analysis.
- ✓
Your demand curve vs the category
Where January and the school holidays are being under-served, and where December can be rescued.
- ✓
The pass vs ticket trade
What optimising to lifetime value instead of cheapest conversion does to your return.
- ✓
The Western Sydney media plan
How we'd reach your core catchment at single-digit CPMs with named-animal creative.