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From two coaches in 1981 to a 50-vehicle fleet today, Tropic Wings has grown with the way people travel. Since joining GetYourGuide in 2015, the platform has come to account for 9–15% of day-tour bookings, with booking volume now around six times its pre-pandemic level.
Key takeaways:
Move early when booking habits start to change. Tropic Wings joined GetYourGuide in 2015, before OTAs had become a major sales channel for much of Australia's tours and attractions sector.
Use OTAs to bring in demand you are not already capturing. GetYourGuide now accounts for around 9% to 15% of Tropic Wings' day-tour bookings, with much of that growth coming from new demand rather than customers shifting from direct channels.
Look beyond peak periods when measuring growth. GetYourGuide has helped Tropic Wings bring in more midweek and shoulder-season bookings, particularly from European and North American travelers.
Use booking data to make practical changes. Tropic Wings has refined tour cut-off times, inclusions, messaging, and bundled experiences, improving bookings, conversion, and weekly demand.
Sell the experience, not simply the price. Tropic Wings has found that premium products, strong visuals and clear storytelling resonate with GetYourGuide customers, with booking volume now around six times its pre-COVID level.
When Ben Woodward's father founded Tropic Wings Cairns Tours and Charters in Cairns in 1981, he had two coaches, a handful of drivers and a passion for showing visitors Tropical North Queensland. The business has stayed in the family ever since.
Today, Tropic Wings is part of the Woodward family's CaPTA Group and carries more than 30,000 day-tour passengers each year. Its fleet has grown to 50 vehicles, 19 of them electric. One thing Ben, now Director of Sales & Marketing at The CaPTA Group, says has not changed is the value of local knowledge.
"Our guides aren't just drivers, they're storytellers, naturalists and proud Cairns locals who know every bend in the road, every seasonal waterfall and every hidden lookout worth stopping for."
Tropic Wings made another early move in 2015, when it joined GetYourGuide. At the time, OTAs still accounted for only a small share of bookings in Australia's tours and attractions sector. The bet paid off. GetYourGuide has since become one of Tropic Wings' top-performing digital partners, bringing in customers from markets such as Europe and North America and, importantly, helping fill tours during quieter midweek and shoulder-season periods.
Ben has also learned something about what those customers are looking for.
"Rather than competing on price, GetYourGuide customers respond strongly to quality, authenticity and story." That has influenced how Tropic Wings talks about its tours, what it learns from booking data and where it sees room to grow next.
We spoke to Ben about growing a family-run tour business, getting ahead of the shift to online booking and finding new demand beyond traditional sales channels.
What do you want guests to get from a Tropic Wings tour?
For us, it's about connecting people with Tropical North Queensland. We want guests to experience the region through local knowledge, with a strong focus on nature and sustainability.
Tropic Wings is part of my family's CaPTA Group, alongside wildlife parks and attractions across Cairns and Port Douglas. Our group mission is to develop passionate people, encourage innovation and a love of nature, and create transformational moments. That's what we're trying to bring to the tours as well.
Why did you decide to start working with GetYourGuide in 2015?
We met GetYourGuide's new Area Manager for Australia and New Zealand at a trade show in 2015, when the company was still establishing itself here. At that point, tours and attractions were getting only a small share of their bookings through OTAs. The accommodation sector was much further ahead.
We could see that booking behavior was changing. We wanted stronger international reach, particularly in long-haul markets, and a digital partner that matched the way people were starting to research and book travel. We also liked the opportunity to present our tours in a more experience-led way, instead of treating them as purely transactional listings.
When did you realize GetYourGuide was bringing in new demand?
A big sign was seeing regular midweek and shoulder-period bookings coming through GetYourGuide, particularly from European and North American customers. It showed us that we were filling capacity we might not have reached through our traditional channels.
GetYourGuide now accounts for around 9% to 15% of our day-tour bookings, depending on the tour. That share has grown steadily since international travel returned after COVID, and much of that has been additional demand rather than bookings shifting away from our direct channels.
How has the customer base changed as you've sold more online?
Through GetYourGuide, we're seeing stronger bookings from the UK, Germany and France, as well as North America, Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia. These customers tend to book further ahead and care about things like sustainability, animal welfare and authenticity.
Digitizing our sales more broadly has also brought us more international independent travelers. We're seeing a wider age range too, including more younger and mid-career customers. Advance bookings have increased, while last-minute mobile bookings are still strong.
What kind of growth have you seen?
Our GetYourGuide booking volume is now about six times what it was before COVID.
We've also seen strong growth as we've expanded OTA and digital distribution overall. Revenue grew 47% year over year in fiscal year 2025-26, after growing 88% the previous year. Over time, revenue growth has been around 30% to 50%, depending on the product and the stage of the market recovery.
We've expanded our product packaging too, with more bundled experiences and clearer upsell options.
What have you learned about what sells well on GetYourGuide?
Our premium Kuranda experiences, particularly those combining wildlife and rainforest, are among the strongest performers. Bundled and all-inclusive tours also do well when people can quickly see what they're getting.
Presentation makes a difference. Strong imagery and clear storytelling work well for us, and one of the surprises has been how customers respond to premium experiences. They're interested in quality, authenticity and story, not simply price.
We've made changes based on the data, too. For one of our bundled experiences, we made the inclusions clearer, gave more prominence to the premium elements and improved the imagery and the way we told the story. We saw a noticeable lift in conversion and fewer questions from customers before their trip.
We don't use GetYourGuide data in our day-to-day operations. We look at it as part of our monthly sales reporting, where it helps us see how products are performing and where there may be something worth changing.
Where do you see the next opportunity for Tropic Wings?
One of our main priorities is growing our new airport transfer service, particularly through OTAs. Another operator left the market, and we think there's demand there that hasn't been fully captured through digital distribution.
Airport transfers can be a high-volume entry point for customers, while our day tours are the higher-value experiences. In the next two to three years, we'd like both to be performing strongly across direct and OTA channels, with continued growth from international markets and our premium products.
What would you tell another operator thinking about working with an OTA?
Work with OTAs as partners, rather than simply putting your tours online and waiting for bookings.
Share what you're trying to achieve and use the information they give you. Look at booking patterns and lead times. Be prepared to change your start times, cut-off periods or messaging if the data points you in that direction.
That's where we've found the relationship becomes much more useful.
