The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK theme parks has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK theme parks perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK theme parks has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK theme parks, including Alton Towers Resort, LEGOLAND, Thorpe Park, Paultons Park, Drayton Manor Resort, Flamingo Land Resort, Chessington World of Adventures Resort, Crealy Theme Park & Resort, Pleasure Beach Resort, Gulliver's Theme Park Resorts, Diggerland, and Lightwater Valley.

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 animal attractions to win brand exposure, sell online tickets, and even improve digital footfall. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q1 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key take-aways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q1 2026 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 theme 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 best and poorest-performing UK theme parks or request a copy of the report for the full review.

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What The Industry Research Report Covers

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.  

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

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 under-perform. 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

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 theme parks was £2,718 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 £1. 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, both Thorpe Park and Diggerland reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £0, and LEGOLAND has the highest at £6 .

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, Crealy Theme Park & Resort has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £12,000, and Chessington World of Adventures Resort has the highest at £102,000. 

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.

Technical Website Compliance

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. It’s essential UK theme parks have easy-to-use websites that highlight the theme park’s facilities and will be a location for customers to purchase tickets. Brands should take into consideration clear pricing, pricing methods, and an up-to-date site containing important information about location, rides available, etc.

In our previous audit, Flamingo Land Resort received the most 404 errors (538). This quarter, Flamingo Land Resort remains at the bottom of the leaderboard, though they’ve since reduced their total number of 404 errors to 530. A smooth browsing experience depends on continuity, and 404 errors disrupt that flow by forcing users to backtrack or search again. This extra effort increases cognitive load and can discourage users from continuing their session. 

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

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. Customers desire a website with quick-loading speeds, which will increase ticket sales. A slow-loading site will contain large, un-optimised images, videos, lots of information per page, heavy coding, and more.

In our previous report, both Drayton Manor Resort and LEGOLAND flagged the slowest mobile site speed (26). This quarter, Drayton Manor Resort has increased their mobile site speed to 36, and LEGOLAND has increased theirs to 34. Currently, the mobile site speed ranges between 64 and 26, with Crealy Theme Park & Resort flagging the slowest score. Speed strongly influences how professional and reliable a brand appears on mobile. Users often judge credibility based on how smoothly and quickly a site performs.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gage of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads.  Theme parks should be continually pushing to improve their DA, which they can achieve by adopting a PR for backlinks from high-authoritative websites. An active blog page and a fast site speed are also effective strategies to help improve the DA rating for each brand.

In our previous report, both Drayton Manor Resort and LEGOLAND flagged the slowest mobile site speed (26). This quarter, Drayton Manor Resort has increased their mobile site speed to 36, and LEGOLAND has increased theirs to 34. Currently, the mobile site speed ranges between 64 and 26, with Crealy Theme Park & Resort flagging the slowest score. Speed strongly influences how professional and reliable a brand appears on mobile. Users often judge credibility based on how smoothly and quickly a site performs.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

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. An effective organic search strategy can set apart one brand from the next, and it helps to reduce the cost of sponsored advertisements. Companies should take care to monitor their keyword strategy and make suitable changes based on the results.

Six brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with Thorpe Park reporting the biggest loss (-21%). On mobile, three brands reported a drop in organic traffic, with Thorpe Park reporting the biggest drop on this device, too (-24%). Websites can proactively increase organic traffic by ensuring their content is fully optimised for both mobile and desktop search intent. This means creating pages that answer user queries clearly while displaying well across different screen sizes and layouts.

Universal Search Opportunity

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 site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Theme parks should utilise all universal search features, as potential customers will want to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs', and 'people also ask'. This is also an opportunity to provide useful, quick content for commonly asked questions that show high potential for conversions.

Alton Towers Resort continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (21,946) — an increase from 11,908 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (15,900).

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

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 brand-new search terms as they enter Google’s index. There are many longtail keyword options that theme parks could use, such as ‘theme parks in north, UK’ and ‘theme parks for the family’.

Alton Towers Resort continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (4,265) — a decrease from 4,621 previously. Alton Towers Resort also secures the most appearances for positions 4–10 (6,389) — a decrease from 7,644 previously. Voice search optimisation is a proactive longtail strategy. Conversational queries and natural language searches tend to be long-tail by nature, making them ideal for websites that structure content around natural phrasing.

Facebook Adverts

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. Animal attractions can adopt a social media strategy to expand reach to help increase ticket sales.

We’ve included screenshots of Chessington World of Adventures Resort’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK theme park used vertical imagery/video to cater to social media users on their mobile (which is the majority of consumers).

Top Social Shares & 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 brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Social media could be especially useful for sharing information about entertainment and attraction updates.

Alton Towers Resort secured the most Facebook Likes (1.4m) and the most Instagram followers (301,100). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Drayton Manor Resort received the highest total engagement rate (13,732), and Lightwater Valley secured the highest average engagement (215).

Website Readability & Accessibility

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, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. All theme parks should aim for zero contrast errors and zero accessibility errors on their websites to improve readability for those using a screen reader.

In our previous report, Flamingo Land Resort flagged the most accessibility alerts (180). This quarter, Flamingo Land Resort has slightly reduced their total to 177 — though they’re still the theme park to watch. Providing clear, associated labels for form fields prevents errors flagged by accessibility tools and improves usability for everyone. When users understand exactly what information is required, they complete forms more confidently and with fewer mistakes. 

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2026 REPORT

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.