When you operate holiday parks spread across a state the size of Western Australia, maintaining a consistent brand experience is no small task. RAC Holiday Parks — part of the Royal Automobile Club of WA — manages a network of parks stretching from the turquoise waters of Exmouth to the tall timbers of Karri Valley, with everything from powered caravan sites to premium self-contained chalets. Each location has its own character, its own clientele, and its own set of facilities that prospective guests need to evaluate before booking.
This is the story of how WellStrategic partnered with RAC Holiday Parks to deploy DSLR-quality 360° virtual tours across their portfolio — bringing visual consistency, operational efficiency, and measurable booking impact to eight distinct Western Australian locations.
The Challenge: One Brand, Eight Parks, Thousands of Kilometres
RAC Holiday Parks faced a set of challenges familiar to any multi-location tourism and hospitality operator. Their parks span vastly different environments — coastal, forest, riverside, outback — and each offers a different mix of accommodation types, from unpowered campsites to fully appointed two-bedroom villas.
Inconsistent Visual Representation
Before the virtual tour rollout, each park's online presence relied on traditional flat photography captured at different times, by different photographers, with different equipment. A family comparing Cervantes to Monkey Mia was effectively comparing apples to oranges. The visual inconsistency made it harder for guests to understand the RAC Holiday Parks brand promise and to confidently choose between locations.
Seasonal Content Gaps
Western Australia's tourism seasons vary dramatically by region. Exmouth peaks during winter when southern parks are quiet, while Margaret River does its best business over summer. Keeping photography current across all locations — and ensuring it reflects the season guests will actually experience — was an ongoing resource drain. Outdated imagery was leading to mismatched expectations and, inevitably, complaints.
Operational Complexity
Coordinating photography shoots across eight locations meant dealing with eight different park managers, eight different schedules, and significant travel logistics. Previous attempts at updating visual content park-by-park had been slow, expensive, and ultimately incomplete.
The challenge was not just capturing great imagery — it was doing so consistently, across every location, in a way that could be maintained and updated without starting from scratch each time.
The Solution: Fleet Package with DSLR-Quality 360° Photography
WellStrategic proposed a Fleet-tier engagement — our multi-location virtual tour package designed specifically for operators managing portfolios of properties. The approach was built on three pillars: DSLR-quality consistency, strategic Matterport 3D upgrades, and a shoot schedule aligned to seasonal peaks.
DSLR-First Capture Across All Locations
Every park received the same core treatment: professional DSLR-quality 360° panoramic photography capturing key facilities, accommodation types, communal areas, and unique natural surrounds. This is not automated camera imagery. Each panorama is captured with professional DSLR equipment, manually exposed and colour-corrected to deliver publication-grade visual fidelity — the kind of detail where guests can read the labels on amenities, assess the condition of furnishings, and appreciate the texture of natural landscapes.
The DSLR-first approach was critical. Holiday park guests are making decisions based on specific details: Is the camp kitchen clean and well-equipped? How large is the ensuite in the deluxe cabin? What does the actual view from the waterfront site look like? Consumer-grade 360° cameras cannot answer these questions with the clarity that drives bookings. Our DSLR workflow can.
Fleet Package Scope
- 8 locations captured with consistent DSLR-quality 360° panoramic photography
- Multiple panoramic scenes per park covering all accommodation types and key facilities
- Matterport 3D upgrades for premium cabin categories at select parks
- Seasonal refresh capability built into the ongoing arrangement
- Centralised management — single point of contact, unified delivery timeline
- Google Maps integration for organic discoverability at each location
Matterport 3D for Premium Accommodation
While DSLR 360° photography formed the backbone of the project, RAC Holiday Parks also opted for Matterport 3D upgrades on their premium cabin categories — the kind of accommodation where guests are paying significantly more and expect a higher level of pre-booking confidence. The Matterport dollhouse view and guided walkthroughs give prospective guests an immersive understanding of layout, space, and finish quality that static photography simply cannot replicate.
This tiered approach — DSLR 360° for the full portfolio, Matterport 3D for high-value accommodation — is a model we recommend to multi-location operators. It balances comprehensive coverage with strategic investment in the listings that generate the highest revenue per booking.
Coordinated Shoot Schedule
Rather than attempting to capture all eight parks in a single marathon trip, WellStrategic worked with RAC's operations team to build a phased shoot schedule. Northern parks were captured during shoulder-season windows when occupancy allowed uninterrupted access but the landscape still looked its best. Southern parks followed a similar logic. The result was a complete portfolio of tours delivered over a managed timeline, with minimal disruption to park operations.
Explore the RAC Holiday Parks Tours
Click and drag to look around inside two of the RAC Holiday Parks virtual tours we delivered.
The Results: Engagement, Bookings, and Operational Efficiency
The impact of deploying multi-location virtual tours across the RAC Holiday Parks portfolio has been measurable across several dimensions.
Engagement Uplift
Pages with embedded virtual tours consistently show longer average session durations compared to pages with flat photography alone. Visitors who interact with a virtual tour view significantly more pages per session and are more likely to proceed to the booking engine. The pattern is consistent across parks — regardless of location or accommodation type, the virtual tour lifts engagement.
Booking Confidence and Conversion
While direct attribution varies by season and park, the overall trend is clear: accommodation categories with virtual tours attached show stronger booking conversion rates than those without. Premium cabins with Matterport 3D tours, in particular, have seen measurable improvement in direct online bookings. Guests report feeling more confident about what they are booking, which also correlates with a reduction in post-booking enquiries and complaints related to mismatched expectations.
Operational Efficiency
The Fleet model delivered meaningful operational efficiencies beyond the guest-facing outcomes:
- Single vendor relationship replacing multiple ad-hoc photography engagements across parks
- Consistent brand presentation that marketing teams can rely on for campaigns, social content, and partner distribution
- Reduced enquiry load on park reception teams, as prospective guests can self-serve detailed facility inspections via the virtual tour
- Seasonal update framework enabling targeted refreshes without re-shooting the entire portfolio
- Reusable assets for OTA listings, social media, and print collateral
Multi-location virtual tours are not just a marketing tool — they are an operational asset that reduces friction at every stage of the guest journey, from discovery to departure.
Key Takeaways for Multi-Location Operators
The RAC Holiday Parks project reinforces several principles that apply to any organisation managing virtual tours across multiple sites:
Lessons from the Fleet Deployment
- Consistency matters more than individual brilliance. A cohesive visual standard across all locations builds brand trust more effectively than one spectacular tour at a single site.
- DSLR quality is non-negotiable for accommodation. Guests making booking decisions need to see detail — fabric textures, kitchen equipment, bathroom condition. Automated 360° cameras lack the resolution and dynamic range to deliver this.
- Tiered investment maximises ROI. Not every space needs Matterport 3D. Apply premium capture strategically to high-revenue accommodation types and let DSLR 360° handle the breadth of coverage.
- Plan for maintenance from day one. A virtual tour portfolio is a living asset. Build seasonal updates and ad-hoc refreshes into the engagement model so content stays current without requiring a full re-shoot.
- Centralise the relationship. One provider, one account manager, one quality standard. The operational savings of a Fleet-tier engagement are as significant as the guest-facing outcomes.
For tourism and hospitality operators managing multiple locations, the Fleet approach transforms virtual tours from a property-by-property expense into a portfolio-wide strategic asset. If you are managing holiday parks, hotel groups, resort collections, or caravan park networks across Australia, WellStrategic's Fleet tier is purpose-built for this exact challenge.