Holiday park site Turu.com.au has revamped its revenue model and will introduce a booking engine in the next few weeks, taking commission on each transaction.
The move to a booking engine has come earlier than anticipated in the brief history of the site, launched in late July. General Manager Robert Gallagher said the roll out has been fast-tracked due to some trepidation among park owners and managers to Turu.com.au’s existing pay per lead system.
Mr Gallagher said Turu.com.au is attracting more 100,000 unique visitors each month with traffic steadily increasing. “We are on track with our forecasts,” he said, adding that the tipping point from a commercial perspective is roughly 220,000 unique visitors each month.
Meanwhile, visitor conversion rates – measured as a holiday park query – are now up to 11% from 3% when the site was first launched. “We are definitely generating some significant revenue for the parks. The next step is the booking engine, which is is being developed “by one of the leading industry players”.
He said Turu is creating a “channel management process” through which parks can automatically or manually update inventory. The aim is to have 50% of the 1840 parks now on Turu.com.au selling through the booking engine within the initial 12 months.
Turu.com.au, owned by media company ACP Magazines, is the first website to specifically target the holiday park sector.