The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK holiday parks has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK holiday parks perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK holiday parks has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national holiday parks, including Haven, Butlin’s, John Fowler, Cove UK, Pontins, Parkdean Resorts, Away Holidays, Park Holidays, Hoseasons, Break Free Holidays, Center Parcs, and Forest Holidays.
The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other holiday parks to win brand exposure, drive online enquiries, and generate holiday bookings. The report highlights year-on-year digital performance, plus winner and loser comparisons across 20+ online performance metrics and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for holiday parks to win brand exposure, online growth and sales.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q3 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 holiday parks on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing UK holiday parks, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.
Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing. Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.
Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. Holiday parks will want to ensure key information such as pricing and activities are clearly signposted, and that important content is not hidden behind broken links and 404 error codes.
John Fowler was the holiday park with the most 4xx errors (35), with Hoseasons closely behind (29 4xx errors). This type of error can cause consumers to become frustrated and lose patience and make them more likely to resort to a competitor. Incorporating redirects in place can help to prevent consumers from being lend to a dead end.
When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. In a competitive field where prospective holiday goers will be looking to snap up deals quickly, having a fast-performing site is essential for holiday parks to generate bookings and provide a positive brand experience.
This quarter, the mobile site speed ranged between 60 and 20, and all holiday parks should aim for at least 50. The holiday park with the lowest mobile site speed was John Fowler, and it should include lazy loading to improve the users’ experience, which can encourage them to become more engaged, helping to improve SEO.
Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Holiday parks could look to collaborate with and outreach to local & national publications, travel sites, and family bloggers to gain valuable backlinks from high-authority sites.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA for this quarter ranged between 72 and 32, with Break Free Holidays reporting the lowest score. While this holiday park received the most backlinks, it received the majority of these from the same website, which can have a negative impact on a website’s DA score.
A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. As consumers are cutting back on treats and expendable items due to the cost of living crisis, you might expect general, overall traffic towards the holiday sector to have fallen year on year. However, with families potentially looking to UK breaks as a cost-effective alternative to holidays abroad, park brands who are capitalising on this change in consumer habits will see much stronger performance than competitors.
Three of the UK holiday parks saw a decline in organic traffic on desktop, and 4 reported a loss in organic traffic on mobile. However, Cove UK updated its URL from Hoburne Holidays and has since reported a 106% traffic increase on desktop and a 158% increase on mobile.
Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Reviews', 'images', and 'local pack' results are all ways for holiday parks to gain trust, and share eye-catching content about their locations, directly from the SERP.
Hoseasons has since taken the top spot for the most Universal Search appearances (129,469) — over double its appearances compared to the previous quarter (64,118).
Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Holiday parks should be looking to optimise for keywords with high purchase/booking intent, that indicate a user at the lower part of the conversion funnel.
Haven has taken the top spot for the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (9,077), while Hoseasons has the most appearances for positions 4–10 (13,129). Securing appearances for positions 4–10 is one of the most effective and quickest ways to improve a brand’s position in search engines.
With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019.
We’ve included examples of Center Parcs’ sponsored posts. This holiday park used vertical videos to adhere to mobile users, and it also incorporated a similar tone throughout each post for a sense of branding and unity.
When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Holiday parks can create content based on their activities, local area, or even to-do lists for families in the run-up to their break away.
Center Parcs continues to have the largest Facebook page (467,000 Likes) — a slight increase from 466,100 in the previous quarter. This holiday park also has the most Instagram followers (200,100). Having a strong social media presence is important for brands, as it allows them to connect with their target audience to increase brand awareness and sales.
20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Holiday parks must be accessible for all, as poor accessibilty on-site may even indicate to a partially sighted user that the park itself may be unsuitable.
In our previous audit, Forest Holidays was the brand to watch, as it reported 86 accessibility alerts. This quarter, it’s increased these further to 95 (the highest of all brands), with the majority of these due to noscript element.
To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi.
Photo by Scott Chambers on Unsplash