Atlas / Food & Hospitality
Industry profile
Tourism & Experiences marketing benchmarks
Strongest on Brand & Positioning, weakest on Data & Tracking. Tourism & Experiences sits below the national average, and that tension shapes how the whole industry markets.
Score signature
Bars are this industry. Ticks are the national average.
Biggest strength
Brand & Positioning
63 out of 100. The engine carrying the whole score.
Biggest gap
Data & Tracking
51 out of 100. The dimension dragging the industry down.
Where to start
Retention & Loyalty
The most upside per point of effort: 15% of the score and 9 points below the field.
The map
Where this industry sits
Every dot is an industry we measure. Choose any two dimensions for the axes. Tourism & Experiences is the red mark.
Acquisition Performance →
Tourism & Experiences sits below average on Retention & Loyalty and below average on Acquisition Performance. That tension defines the industry.
The spread inside the industry
Every number is a Marketing Score out of 100. It rolls six dimensions into one figure, so 49 is a business doing the basics and 75 is one that markets like a business twice its size.
The distance between the strongest and weakest performer here is wide. A small cluster is genuinely good. A long tail sits well behind. The bar to lead this industry is lower than the reputation suggests. So where would you land?
The breakdown
How far above or below the field
Each row plots this industry against the whole field. The dot is where Tourism & Experiences sits, the line is the national average and the faint marks are every other industry. Tap a row for what the dimension means.
How modern and capable is the digital setup?
How well does the industry win new demand?
How well does it turn interest into customers?
How well does it keep and grow customers?
How clear and distinct is the brand?
Can any of this actually be measured?
The read
What the numbers say about Tourism & Experiences
On the whole, Tourism & Experiences is one of the weaker industries we measure. It leads on brand & positioning and trails on data & tracking, and the fastest gains sit in retention & loyalty.
Brand & Positioning
Sits around the middle of the pack of every industry we measure. This is the engine carrying the score.
Data & Tracking
Sits near the back of the field. The soft spot that drags the whole number down.
Retention & Loyalty
Carries the most weight in the score and sits below the field. Move this and the whole number moves with it.
A brand & positioning-led industry with a data & tracking problem. The reputation says one thing. The pipeline says another.
Go deeper
Tourism marketing after the reset+
Australian tourism went through the hardest reset any industry has experienced. COVID eliminated international visitors for two years and devastated domestic travel for months. The composite reflects a sector that has recovered operationally but is still rebuilding its marketing capability.
Acquisition with 30% weight is the recovery priority. International visitor numbers have returned to pre-COVID levels in most segments, but the competitive landscape has shifted. OTAs have consolidated power. Google has launched its own Things to Do product. Social media algorithms have changed. The operators who adapted their acquisition strategies during COVID are ahead of those who simply waited for borders to reopen.
Brand captures the Australian tourism advantage. The destination itself is the brand: the Great Barrier Reef, the Outback, Melbourne's laneways, the Barossa Valley. Experience operators who align their brand with these destination narratives and create authentic, uniquely Australian experiences attract premium pricing.
The retention challenge requires reframing. A tourist who snorkels the Reef once might not return, but they can become a marketing asset. Reviews on TripAdvisor and Google, social media content, referrals to friends, these are retention in a tourism context. The operators who systematically capture post-experience content and reviews build acquisition machines from their retention efforts.
Seasonality is the marketing constraint that shapes everything. Tourism operators need to fill capacity in peak season and survive the off-season. The ones using dynamic pricing, off-season packaging and targeted campaigns for shoulder season build more sustainable businesses than those who ride the peak-trough cycle.
Acquisition dominates a seasonal business+
Acquisition carries 30%, the largest weight. Tourism is a discovery business. Travellers find experiences through OTAs, Google, social media and destination marketing. The operators visible in these channels capture bookings.
Conversion at 20% measures the booking process. Tourism has moved almost entirely online. The experience providers with seamless booking, clear pricing and instant confirmation convert search traffic into revenue.
Retention at 15% and 53.1 is structurally low. Most tourism experiences are one-time purchases. The retention opportunity is in converting visitors into advocates who review, share and recommend.
Where tourism operators should invest+
Acquisition with 30% weight improves through distribution diversification. OTA dependency (Viator, GetYourGuide, Booking.com) costs 20-25% commission. Building direct booking capability through SEO, Google Things to Do, and email marketing reduces platform dependency.
Brand with 15% weight differentiates through experience quality and storytelling. The operators with strong visual content, authentic Australian experiences and genuine reviews attract premium bookings.
Data with 5% weight is the weakest dimension. Most tourism operators lack visibility into which channels generate their most profitable bookings. Connecting booking data to marketing attribution would transform investment decisions.
Highlighted terms link through to the marketing dictionary.
Frequently asked
Common questions about Tourism & Experiences
How does Australian tourism compare on marketing?+
How can tourism operators reduce OTA dependency?+
What marketing works for tourism experiences?+
How important are reviews for tourism operators?+
Keep exploring
Where to go from here
Pull any thread.
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