Prepared for Discovery Parks

What we found inside Discovery Parks' acquisition engine.

You run the largest holiday park network in the country, 100+ parks, a direct booking engine and a membership base most accommodation brands would trade a wing for. The question is whether your media is working as hard as that asset.

We spent a morning on your site, mapped it against the national travel category, and one number jumped out immediately.

Wikimedia Commons

$25Mspent by Hotels & Resorts
across the whole category

The thing that caught our eye

You sit in the most under-advertised corner of a $677M category.

Of the $677M spent advertising travel in Australia last year, accommodation brands (Hotels and Resorts) spent just $25M. OTAs and booking platforms spent $126M. Tour operators spent $183M. In other words, the layer that sells your rooms is outspending the layer that owns your rooms by roughly five to one.

That is not a warning. It is an opening. In a category where everyone above you buys demand aggressively and the accommodation tier barely shows up, the brand that captures travellers directly, before the OTA does, wins the margin twice.

We've solved thisWe build direct-booking engines for travel brands so the OTA is the fallback, not the front door.

Where the category money goes

The $677M is not spread the way you'd guess.

Airlines, tour operators and OTAs soak up the lion's share of category spend. Your slice, accommodation, is a rounding error by comparison, which means your share of voice can be bought far cheaper than theirs.

Accommodation is the quietest tier in a loud category. Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025.

Timing is the whole game

Your demand peaks in January. Your competitors' budgets don't move with it.

The category peaks in January and bottoms out in December. For a domestic road-trip and caravan business, that summer spike is your entire year in miniature. The mistake most make is spending in January. The bookings for January are decided in October and November, when lead-time planning for summer holidays starts and the media is cheaper.

The window to win summer opens in spring, not summer. Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025.

We can map your booking lead-times against this curve and show you exactly which weeks your dollars are late. It takes us about a day.

Let's talk

The channel picture

The category is still pouring $208M into newspapers.

Newspapers remain the single largest channel in travel advertising, ahead of Digital and Social and Television. For a brand whose audience is families booking cabins and grey-nomads planning the next leg on their phone, that print weight is legacy spend protecting itself. It is also your advantage: while rivals defend column inches, the digital auction where your buyers actually decide stays winnable.

Print still leads the category on paper. Your buyers are not there. Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025.

What you only learn from the inside

Things we know that aren't on any dashboard.

Book the spring, not the summer

Caravan and cabin bookings for the January peak are researched 8 to 12 weeks out. If your paid weight lands in January, you paid a premium to reach people who already booked.

Your own park names get poached

OTAs bid on "Discovery Parks [town]" search terms and skim a commission on your own brand demand. Defending those exact-match terms usually costs cents and returns more than any prospecting line.

Membership is a signal, not just a discount

G'day Rewards members are your highest-intent, cheapest-to-reactivate audience. Feeding that list into lookalike and retention campaigns beats cold prospecting on cost per booking almost every time.

100 parks means 100 geo-auctions

A national buy averages the winners and the strugglers together. Split by park and the parks with soft occupancy need weight; the sold-out ones should stop spending. Most networks never separate the two.

The $99 cabin is a hook, not a margin

Deal-led creative pulls clicks but attracts the lowest-value stay. The trick is using the deal to open the door, then merchandising the longer stay and add-ons at the booking step.

Weather moves your auction

Domestic short-break demand spikes on the forecast, not the calendar. Campaigns that flex bids against a long weekend or a heatwave capture last-minute availability the OTAs can't react to fast enough.

One honest comparison

What we actually deliver in travel.

These are our own results across Australian and New Zealand travel and tourism accounts over the last year. Kept deliberately loose, because your numbers will land in their own place, not on an industry average.

Google ROAS

12x+

North of 12x return across our travel accounts, with top performers well past 20x.

Cost per booking

under $20

Our category sits under $20 to drive a purchase on Search and PMax.

Meta CPMs

single digit

Single-digit CPMs to reach in-market domestic travellers on Meta.

Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026. Directional, not spend-weighted.

Three things we'd look at first

Where we'd start, specifically.

Own your brand and park-name search

Audit every "Discovery Parks [location]" term for OTA and aggregator bidding, then lock down defence at exact match. This is the cheapest margin in your account and it protects direct bookings you've already earned.

Track recordWe routinely claw brand demand back from OTAs at costs per booking under $20.

Shift weight into the spring booking window

Pull prospecting budget forward into October and November so you capture summer intent while media is cheaper, then let retention and last-minute availability carry January itself.

Track recordLead-time-matched flighting is how we hold ROAS north of 12x through peaks.

Turn G'day Rewards into your acquisition engine

Your member list is a first-party goldmine. Build lookalikes off high-value members, run occupancy-driven reactivation by park, and let the membership signal do the targeting the OTAs can't replicate.

Track recordMember-seeded audiences consistently beat cold prospecting on cost per booking for us.

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 dated category intel. With your booking, occupancy and membership data, we'd build this properly.

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.

Low 7 figures

Margin sitting in bookings that leak to third-party platforms

The lever is direct-booking margin. Even a network built to sell direct leaks a share of stays to OTAs and aggregators at roughly 12 to 15% commission. On a 100-park national business turning over serious annual accommodation revenue, clawing back even a few points of that leakage to direct, through defended brand search, membership reactivation and lead-time-matched flighting, is comfortably low seven figures a year. That is the first number we'd chase.

We'll tighten this against your actuals and channel mix. The figure moves; the opportunity doesn't.

We take on a limited number of travel accounts at a time

The next step

Want the version built on your numbers?

Give us occupancy by park, your booking lead-times and the G'day Rewards list, and we'll show you exactly where the margin is leaking and what it's worth.

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 your acquisition than most agencies would hand over for free.

✓
Your brand-search exposure
How much of your own park demand OTAs are currently bidding on, and what it costs to take it back.
✓
Your seasonal flighting
Where your spend sits against the real spring booking window versus the January peak.
✓
Your membership upside
What G'day Rewards could deliver as an acquisition and reactivation asset, park by park.