Home & Away Tour: Turning Superfans into a UGC Engine (and lifting ticket sales by 50%)

Client: Channel 7’s Home & Away Tour

Services: Social media strategy, UGC program + team upskilling, content framework, post-production, publishing, paid Meta campaigns, measurement & optimisation

Sector: Tourism / Entertainment

The Home & Away Tour is one of those rare tourism products that comes pre-loaded with “marketing gold”.

You’ve got an iconic location (Summer Bay), built-in emotional connection (decades of TV nostalgia), and the kind of experience people want to document—selfies, behind-the-scenes moments, cast encounters, the “I can’t believe I’m here” reactions. In other words: the perfect environment for User Generated Content (UGC).

But here’s the problem: just because great UGC happens doesn’t mean it turns into consistent marketing. And it definitely doesn’t mean it drives ticket sales.

When Remap came in, the tour team had the raw ingredients, but not the system to capture, shape and distribute them at scale. Their socials were running dry, engagement was inconsistent, and Meta ads weren’t converting the way they should.

The brief was simple: bring the tour to life online and sell more tickets.

What made the difference wasn’t a “bigger content budget” or a glossy production shoot. It was building a reliable machine that could turn everyday tour moments into high-performing content—fast.

That machine was UGC.

The challenge: a content-rich experience, but a content-poor feed

 

From the outside, it’s easy to assume a tourism brand like this is constantly overflowing with content. The reality was the opposite.

Every tour was full of genuine moments—fans meeting cast members, laughing, reacting, filming their surroundings, taking photos at well-known set locations. But most of it was never captured in a way that was usable for social media.

So the brand had a gap:

• Not enough fresh, authentic content hitting social channels.
• Low and inconsistent organic reach.
• Engagement that spiked randomly and then dropped off.
• Paid spend on Meta that wasn’t delivering the conversions they needed.

And the more content dried up, the harder everything got. Social feeds started feeling quiet. Ads felt more like “ads” because they weren’t powered by real moments. And when you’re selling an experience, that authenticity is everything.

 

The insight: the best content was already there (it just wasn’t being captured)

 

The turning point was recognising what the team already had:

• A constant stream of happy customers
• A highly shareable, visually strong environment
• Emotional reactions (nostalgia + excitement)
• On-tour moments that couldn’t be replicated anywhere else

That’s basically the definition of a UGC opportunity.

The issue wasn’t lack of content—it was lack of process.

So instead of coming in and “making content” for them in isolation, Remap built an approach that helped the tour team create and capture UGC themselves, then plug it into a strategy framework that made it actually work.

 

The solution: a UGC program built for speed, consistency, and conversion

Step 1: Turn tour guides into “content ninjas”

The first move was practical: the people closest to the action needed to become confident capturing it.

We delivered hands-on training and upskilling with the tour team, showing them how to film quick, candid, high-impact video on the fly. Not staged. Not scripted. Not “everyone line up and smile”.

Real moments, captured simply, in a way that could be repeated every day.

This mattered because UGC doesn’t work when it feels forced. It works when it feels like you’re seeing something you weren’t supposed to see—the little bits of magic that make you want to be there too.

We focused on:

• What to film (moments that trigger emotion)
• How to film it quickly (without slowing down the tour)
• How to frame, light and record audio on a phone
• Simple “shot lists” and prompts to remove guesswork
• Guardrails so the content stayed on-brand

The goal wasn’t to turn guides into professional videographers. It was to make UGC capture easy, repeatable, and consistent.

 

Step 2: Build the content framework (so UGC didn’t become chaos)

UGC is powerful, but it can also become a messy camera roll of random clips if you don’t give it structure.

So Remap provided a content framework that mapped UGC to clear content pillars and outcomes. That meant:

• What content was for awareness (hook + vibe)
• What content was for consideration (what you actually do on the tour)
• What content was for conversion (clear CTA, booking prompts, urgency)

This is where UGC stops being “nice content” and becomes a sales tool.

Instead of “post when we have something”, the brand moved to a steady rhythm built around the customer journey—powered by what was being captured on tours.

 

Step 3: Post-production that kept it fast (and kept it watchable)

Raw UGC is great, but raw UGC without polish can also underperform—especially in paid.

Remap handled post-production to make the content social-ready without killing what made it authentic. Think:

• Tight edits and captions (so it worked with sound off)
• Simple overlays and templates to keep brand consistency
• Reformatting for Stories/Reels/Feed
• Turning one tour’s footage into multiple assets
• Maintaining that “real” feel (no over-editing)

This is the sweet spot: UGC energy with brand discipline.

 

Step 4: Publishing + distribution (where content starts earning its keep)

A lot of brands stop at “we made content”.

We didn’t.

The whole point was to make sure the right people saw it, in the right format, at the right time, and then took action.

So alongside publishing, Remap brought the distribution plan: content sequencing, campaign structure, and a clear pathway from scroll to sale.

 

Step 5: Paid Meta campaigns designed to convert

With a consistent stream of authentic UGC now flowing, we could finally make paid work harder.

Remap used Meta capabilities to build a smarter targeting and testing approach, including:

• Audience segmentation (site visitors, engagers, past purchasers)
• Lookalike audiences to find more people like existing buyers
• Geo-targeting to prioritise high-intent regions
• Creative testing to quickly find the best-performing angles and formats

And critically: the ads didn’t feel like “ad creatives”. They felt like the real tour experience—because they were built from real tour moments.

That authenticity is what improved click-through, reduced friction, and helped drive bookings.

 

Step 6: Measurement and optimisation (so it didn’t fall apart after the first wins)

When ticket sales lift, it’s tempting to just keep pushing the same thing.

Instead, we measured performance and used the data to keep sharpening:

• Which UGC themes drove the most bookings
• Which formats performed best (Reels vs Stories vs Feed)
• What hooks stopped the scroll fastest
• What CTAs actually moved people to purchase
• Where drop-offs happened and how to fix them

This kept the engine healthy and scalable, instead of relying on one-off viral moments.

 

The results: UGC + strategy = 50% ticket sales uplift

Once the Home & Away Tour had a steady stream of authentic UGC, supported by a clear strategy and a paid engine built to convert, performance shifted quickly.

Outcome highlights:

Ticket sales increased by 50% once the UGC engine and campaign framework were in place (steady capture + Remap strategy, post-production, publishing, and measurement)

• Ticket sales spiked within weeks of rollout
• Engagement across Facebook and Instagram lifted significantly
• Paid performance improved with stronger ROI, better click-through rates, and lower cost-per-acquisition
• The brand’s social presence felt more human and alive, helping build trust and intent

 

Why this worked (and why it’s relevant beyond tourism)

This case study is a reminder that UGC isn’t a tactic; it’s an asset class.

If your business has customers, a product experience, or any kind of “moment” people enjoy, you probably have UGC happening already. The difference between brands that benefit from it and brands that don’t is simple:

Do you have a system to capture it, shape it, and put it to work?

For the Home & Away Tour, the win came from connecting the dots:

• Capture UGC consistently (without relying on a “content day”)
• Apply a strategy framework (so every post has a job to do)
• Polish it just enough (so it performs, especially in paid)
• Distribute it properly (so it reaches buyers, not just followers)
• Measure and iterate (so results compound over time)

That’s how you turn “random great moments” into a digital sales engine.