The Q1 2026 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 Q1 2026 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, Parkdean Resorts, Away Holidays, Park Holidays, Hoseasons, Break Free Holidays, Center Parcs, Forest Holidays, and Sand Bay Holiday Village.
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 Q1 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;
To understand what the *CTM Digital Performance Index™ is click here.
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.
Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.
For Q1 2026, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK holiday parks was £82,614 with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £5. This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively.
There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Butlin’s reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £1, and John Fowler has the highest at £15.
The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Break Free Holidays has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £48,200, and Butlin’s has the highest at £1,380,000.
By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.
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.
In our previous audit, John Fowler received the most 404 errors (88). This quarter, John Fowler remains at the bottom of the leaderboard, though they’ve since reduced their total number of 404 errors to 54. Providing clear navigation menus and search functionality reduces the likelihood that users will manually enter incorrect URLs. When visitors can easily locate content through structured navigation, they are less exposed to broken or mistyped links.
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.
In our previous report, Park Holidays flagged the slowest mobile site speed (7). This quarter, Park Holidays has increased their mobile site speed to 28, moving them up the leaderboard. Currently, the mobile site speed ranges between 70 and 18, with John Fowler reporting the slowest speed. Enabling browser caching allows returning visitors’ devices to store parts of the website locally. This dramatically accelerates repeat visits on mobile, improving convenience and encouraging continued engagement.
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.
In our last report, Break Free Holidays reported the lowest DA score (34). This quarter, Break Free Holidays continues to report 34 for their DA score, keeping them at the bottom of the leaderboard. Technical SEO health is a foundational element of domain authority, and 404 errors represent technical weakness. Search engines and SEO platforms evaluate site quality holistically, and persistent errors lower technical trust signals. This reduces the site’s perceived reliability, which in turn weakens authority metrics.
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.
Seven brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with Cove UK reporting the biggest loss (-72%). On mobile, three brands reported a drop in organic traffic, with Cove UK reporting the biggest drop (-63%). Proactive internal linking strategies help distribute authority across a website and guide users to related content. This improves discoverability in search engines while supporting navigation on both small and large screens.
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 continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (64,196) — an increase from 57,423 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (60,200).
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 now secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (9,009) — a with Hoseasons currently in second place. Hoseasons continues to secure the most appearances for positions 4–10 (15,008) — a decrease from 16,957 previously. Proactively monitoring search trends and query data supports longtail growth. Analysing search console data and internal site search behaviour reveals new opportunities to target emerging longtail phrases.
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 screenshots of Break Free Holidays’ sponsored Facebook posts. This UK holiday park should aim to make their posts unique from each other to avoid uploading repetitive content.
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 secured the most Facebook Likes (492,800) and the most Instagram followers (303,200). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Butlin’s received the highest total engagement rate (10,845) and the highest average engagement (140).
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 report, Cove UK flagged the most accessibility alerts (278). This quarter, Cove UK has reduced their total to 104 — moving them up the leaderboard. Currently, the holiday park with the most accessibility alerts is Hoseasons (flagging 139). Ensuring all images include accurate, descriptive alt text is one of the simplest ways to reduce accessibility alerts. When screen reader users can understand visual content through alt descriptions, they’re able to engage with the same information as sighted users, creating a more inclusive browsing experience.
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 Rory Tarplee.