When it comes to attracting and delighting guests at amusement parks, few people understand the power of brand, storytelling, and data-driven decisions like Michelle Rowling. As Head of Sales and Marketing at Luna Park Sydney, a heritage amusement park that welcomes 1.5 million guests annually, Michelle is responsible for not just filling rides, but creating meaningful, memorable, and joyful guest experiences.
I recently sat down with Michelle to learn more about her background, her approach to marketing at one of Australia’s most iconic attractions, and the strategies that have helped her and her team thrive.
Five top marketing tips for attractions
Michelle shared five standout tips every attraction operator should consider:
- Remember, you’re selling fun, not pacemakers
Our industry is about creating joy, making memories, and helping people celebrate milestones. Keep that front of mind, always. - Listen to your guests
Understanding what your guests want (and don’t want) helps refine the experience. But don’t ignore those who visit but don’t transact. Who are they? Why didn’t they buy? That’s a growth opportunity. - Spend like it's your own money
Accountability is key. Michelle often divides campaign costs by average ticket price to evaluate whether an investment will actually convert. - Partner where you can’t build
Luna Park’s partnerships with brands like Netflix and platforms like Fever have opened up world-class experiences that would have been nearly impossible to deliver alone. - Don’t neglect work-life balance
Attractions run hardest when others are on holidays. Michelle encourages celebrating off-peak times and ensuring teams are recharging when they can.
With so many of our amusement park customers around the world, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, gearing up for peak season, these tips couldn’t be more relevant. Marketing and promotions are front and center right now, and what Michelle shared is a great reminder that it’s the fundamentals that really move the needle.
If you’re focusing on building your brand, running smarter campaigns, or just trying to connect more deeply with your guests, there’s a lot to take from Luna Park’s approach: It’s about keeping things simple, strategic, and always guest-first.
ROLLER’s Brett Sheridan and Luna Park’s Michelle Rowling outside the 90 year old Luna Park Sydney
Top 3 metrics to guide marketing performance
Michelle also shared the three key metrics that guide her team’s marketing strategy at Luna Park Sydney. Each one plays a vital role in ensuring marketing isn’t just creative—but accountable, impactful, and aligned with the broader business.
ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend):
This is about ensuring every dollar spent—particularly on media and social campaigns—can be tracked back to tangible outcomes, ideally ticket sales. If the team can’t confidently link spend to results, it prompts a rethink. It’s a clear way of measuring effectiveness and making sure the budget is working hard.
SPH (Spend Per Head):
This goes beyond just ticket revenue. Michelle and her team look at the total average spend per guest, both at the time of purchase and inside the venue. That includes food, beverage, merchandise, and other ancillary spend. It gives them a complete view of guest value and helps guide decisions about pricing, bundling, and upsells.
GPP (Gross Profit Percentage):
This metric helps the team prioritize where to focus their marketing efforts. While all attractions deserve visibility, Luna Park’s marketing team works closely with finance to ensure the products and experiences that drive the business forward receive the greatest share of voice. With limited bandwidth across paid, owned, and earned channels, every campaign must be strategically chosen—and every dollar needs to move the needle.
Behind the marketing magic at Luna Park Sydney: A conversation with Michelle Rowling
A career built on creativity, hospitality and media
Brett: Michelle, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to work at Luna Park Sydney?
Michelle: My role is Head of Sales and Marketing here at Luna Park Sydney, and I lead a team of marketers as well as the sales functions and events teams, attracting over a million guests here to Luna Park annually. I see my role as key to the world of business in orchestrating the entirety of our team to ensure that we're delivering with impact on guest experience.
The idea that I could actually land working for an Australian icon—a known brand, a known asset—was really important to me. And I think my kids are pretty proud of where I work, which is the biggest thing that makes me happy every single day.
Reinventing an Australian icon
Brett: Can you describe for us what LPS, or Luna Park Sydney, is. You sort of touched on a million visitors already—give us an insight on what Luna Park is for those who don’t know it.
Michelle: We’re leaning into 1.5 million tickets sold annually across our park and experiences.
The amusement park is 90 years young. It has been tried and tested, known, loved, and recalled by Sydneysiders and the like quite fondly. What we’re doing currently in our 90th year is working on a transformation of Luna Park Sydney—introducing new experiences and new ticketed offerings that extend us beyond just exclusively being for ride and food use.
A big thing that we’re working towards is increasing our e-commerce. What I mean by that is all of our tickets—we currently drive as many as we can to purchase online. We’re sitting at around 70%, and we’ve still got 30% who do a walk-up purchase at the front ticket box.
Stats about Luna Park Sydney:
- 1.5 million guests annually
- 70% of guests purchase their tickets online
- Though it’s a popular tourist destination, less than 10% of guests are tourists
- Partnerships with Netflix and other entertainment companies bring local guests back for new experiences
How an open-entry park changes the marketing game
Brett: I think an interesting factor about Luna Park Sydney, that might be different to a lot of other theme parks and amusement parks around the world, is that it’s an open-to-the-public park.
Which is fantastic because you’ve got a lot of people that just come here, walk through the gates, but also, it’s a challenge at the same time.
Can you talk about the nuances around that?
Michelle: One of our claims to fame is that we are one of the most Instagrammable sites in Sydney. So the idea that people are coming and taking a photo—we would be in many family albums and holiday snapshots—with people who might not have necessarily transacted with us or gone on a ride.
A key focus for us, as we are a free-entry park, is making sure that when guests do come to get that Instagram reel shot, we encourage them to make a purchase—even if it’s a coffee or an ice cream—to sit down and enjoy the experience of coming to Luna Park rather than just taking a happy snap and moving on.
That’s a big focus for us: how we attract the non-customer.
We also know that because we are a free-entry park, there are a lot of guests who come to us to watch their children and grandchildren experience the rides or go to an experience, but they don’t necessarily transact themselves.
So how can we entice them to accompany the rider or accompany the guest and have a great time themselves?
Expanding revenue through diversified products
Brett: One of the challenges of any attraction operator is diversifying your revenue streams and ensuring that you’ve got multiple different revenue or sales channels that you’re building into your product.
At Luna Park there was really only one product—which was unlimited rides—for a very, very long time. Talk us through how you approach the diversification of revenue.
Michelle: The unlimited ride pass, while it worked incredibly well for a majority of our guests, meant that you could essentially come here from open ‘til close and go on as many rides as possible at an advertised price. It was very appealing for riders.
But what we’ve done in recent times, especially with our light model, is we’ve opened up a one- and two-ride pass. So people can come and experience just one ride—perfect if you want to go on the Ferris wheel or the carousel or just have an experience with younger children or older people.
It also means that we can become a stopover for tourism, making sure that we fit into their wider day in Sydney. They don’t have to commit a three- or four-hour period with us—they can come along and just go on one ride.
Why Luna Park still feels magical
Brett: What do you love about marketing at Luna Park Sydney?
Michelle: I love that my kids are proud of where I work. They don’t know what I do. They don’t actually care what I do. But the fact that they can proudly say that “Mum works at Luna Park Sydney,” and when we want to have fun together, they know that Mum can hook them up with tickets, whether it’s for our attraction or others, we have great networks and relationships in the industry. That, I think, is ultimately the number one perk.
I love working at Luna Park Sydney specifically because I work for a brand and an icon that everyone instantly recognizes. They know where I work as soon as I mention it, and they’re already thinking about their own experiences or their own engagements with us at Luna Park Sydney.
They’re not thinking about my job anymore—they’re thinking about the last time they went on the Big Dipper. I think that’s really important—that we can essentially pull fun and core memories out of people every time we speak to them about where we might work.
A core memory in a mascot suit
Brett: What’s a moment at Luna Park that really made you smile? Something that reminds you what you love—your story.
Michelle: In recent years, we worked with Canteen to launch Bandana Day, and we were raising funds for teenagers on a cancer journey. Not only did we have an entire cohort of cancer survivors and supporters coming to Luna Park for what, to us, was a simple day—but to them was a day of respite and fun. That made me incredibly proud of what we do and why.
We needed someone to be the park mascot that day, and we didn’t have a body—so I jumped into the suit and was dancing around on national TV. That was absolutely a core memory for me.
It gave back to the community, but it also demonstrated how blessed we are to work in this industry that we sometimes take for granted. For these kids going through what is hopefully the biggest hardship they’ll ever face in life, to be able to come and have a day of respite with us—that was really, really exciting.
From that, I was incredibly inspired; we now have an ongoing application program where, on a monthly basis, we review community grant applications for tickets, Ferris Wheel light-ups, respite days, and support. We still have that going on monthly and I think that’s really important. It’s something that everyone in this industry has an opportunity to do.
Brett: The program seems to have fanned out more than what it used to be—that’s brilliant.
What does “spreading happiness” look like in a marketing context for you?
Michelle: Without a doubt, it’s intergenerational fun and the creation of lasting happiness.
The World’s Biggest Fan of Luna Park
Brett: A lot of people reading this will be going into their summer programs, trying to sit down and figure out: What campaigns worked well? What didn’t? What should we try differently this time?
Can you share with us a couple of campaigns: First, one that has helped as you’ve moved into summer—what you’re most proud of.
And also, a campaign or message you worked on that you felt truly connected to on an emotional level.
Michelle: When we talk about our industry, we are incredibly cyclical. Peaks and troughs are arguably inevitable. But I see it as a function of sales and marketing to ensure that we’re really smoothing out those curves.
Investment in brand and brand activities is really important to us here at Luna Park. So one campaign that we did—and still use because it still performs so well—is Alexander: The World’s Biggest Fan of Luna Park.
Alexander is self-proclaimed—he is definitely self-proclaimed—but he’s also uncontested! He features in our ad campaign, which we use regularly, especially through BVOD and online video. You’ll see Alexander being streamed.
He also celebrates things with us each and every time we need a mascot or an embodiment of Luna Park—he’s there. To launch birthday parties, Alexander supported us. And most recently, to relaunch the Wild Mouse, Alexander was there.
Alexander has grown up with Luna Park. He is essentially a living mascot who’s growing up through Luna Park. I think it’s a really strong campaign.
But it doesn’t always have to be as polished as the first campaign.
Alexander himself had been working up to riding the Big Dipper for the first time.
When he was finally ready we were ready to film it all. I had visions of this Nike-style advert—he’s lacing up his sneakers, training, preparing, etc.But it couldn’t happen like that—because working with children doesn’t allow you to do that!
One day, the team was racing downstairs. I asked, “What are you doing?”
And they said, “Alexander is in the Dipper line. We need to get there!”
So we strapped a GoPro to the front of the ride and captured his first moment.
That was not only incredible for him and his family, but it became one of our best-performing social campaigns—Alexander’s first ride on the Big Dipper.
Watch this: Meet Alexander- the world’s biggest Luna Park Fan!
Relaunching the Wild Mouse
Michelle: Another campaign that I’ll reflect on is when we relaunched the Wild Mouse.
We did a callout for user-generated content, asking guests if they wanted to be the first to ride the new Wild Mouse. We just called for content—stories, photographs, memories.
25 words or less: “Why do you want to ride? Who would you come with?”
The stories we were able to unlock, the photos and history we uncovered—it was really moving. It truly demonstrated not only to us as a marketing team but to the wider team internally what we’ve been able to achieve by relaunching that coaster.
It’s been here since the 1960s, and we had literal intergenerational families wanting to come back and ride the Wild Mouse again for the first time.
We cannot underestimate that power—we have that within our industry.
Conclusion
Michelle’s approach is a masterclass in combining creativity with accountability, and joy with strategy. From harnessing partnerships and storytelling to obsessing over key metrics, Luna Park Sydney is a standout example of what happens when marketing and operations work hand-in-hand.
