How Queenstown Hospitality Brands Should Split Budget Between Planning-Stage and Last-Minute Search
Should your Queenstown hospitality business spend more on early trip-planning searches or last-minute, in-town bookings? Here's how to think about the split.
One of the most common questions we hear from Queenstown hospitality and activity businesses is some version of: "should we be spending our ad budget on people planning their trip, or people already here looking for something to do today?"
The honest answer is both - but most businesses get the split wrong, usually by over-investing in one and almost ignoring the other. Here's how to think about it properly.
Two very different customers, two very different campaigns
The planning-stage customer is searching weeks or months before arrival, often comparing multiple operators, destinations, and price points before making any decision. They're not ready to book instantly - they need to be informed, reassured, and then remembered.
The last-minute, in-town customer already has a hotel room, has probably already booked their "big" activity, and is now filling gaps in their itinerary - often searching from their phone, often within a few hours of when they want to do something.
These two customers respond to completely different marketing:
| Planning-stage | Last-minute in-town | |
|---|---|---|
| Search behaviour | Broad, comparative ("best things to do in Queenstown") | Narrow, immediate ("bungy jumping today," "restaurant near me tonight") |
| Best channels | Content, SEO, remarketing, social | Google Maps, Google Ads with location extensions, same-day availability listings |
| Booking window | Weeks to months | Hours |
| What convinces them | Reviews, comparison content, itinerary planning | Availability, proximity, instant confirmation |
A sensible starting split
There's no universal correct ratio - it depends on your business type - but as a general starting point:
Accommodation and multi-day activity operators (skiing, multi-day tours, higher-cost experiences) should weight budget more heavily toward the planning stage, since these are booked well in advance and rarely decided on the day.
Restaurants, shorter activities, and lower-cost experiences can weight more heavily toward last-minute, in-town capture, since these are frequently booked same-day or next-day by visitors already in town.
Most businesses benefit from running both simultaneously rather than switching between them seasonally - the planning-stage audience for next month exists at the same time as the last-minute audience for today.
Common mistakes we see
Spending everything on "near me" and map ads. This captures visitors already in town, but does nothing to build awareness with the much larger pool of people still deciding whether to book you weeks before they arrive - and by the time they're searching "near me," a competitor with stronger planning-stage visibility may have already won the booking.
Ignoring last-minute search entirely in favour of long-term brand content. The opposite mistake - businesses that invest heavily in planning-stage content but have poor Google Business Profile visibility, slow site speed, or unclear same-day availability information lose the in-town, ready-to-book visitor to a faster-loading, easier-to-book competitor.
Treating the whole year the same way. The right split shifts with your season. In the lead-up to peak season, planning-stage spend should increase, since that's when the following season's visitors are actively researching. Once you're in peak season itself, last-minute in-town capture becomes more valuable as visitor numbers on the ground climb.
The takeaway
Queenstown hospitality and activity businesses that treat this as a single, one-size-fits-all campaign are usually leaving revenue on the table in one direction or the other. Splitting budget deliberately between planning-stage visibility and last-minute, in-town capture - and adjusting that split seasonally - consistently outperforms a flat, always-the-same approach.
Not sure what the right split looks like for your business? Talk to FR Digital about a Queenstown-specific campaign strategy.
