How do you get Christmas Market visitors onto Park and Ride?

The brief

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York Park and Ride wanted to encourage both local visitors and tourists to choose Park and Ride into York over the festive period. The activity had to align with the York Christmas Market's opening on 13 November, and the message aimed at local visitors could not overlap a separate commuter campaign already running to the same audience earlier in the autumn.

What we planned

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We planned a six-week campaign running from 9 November to 21 December 2025 for two audiences. The first was local visitors, car-driving adults aged 18 to 64 within a 45-minute drive of York. The second was tourists and day-trippers, adults aged 18 to 75 including family groups, within a 45- to 120-minute drive. High-impact display was chosen to build early awareness within trusted content environments. Meta carried Reels, Stories and in-feed creative to engage and educate, and a Christmas message was folded into the existing always-on Google Search and Performance Max account rather than run as a new campaign. Activity was upweighted toward tourists ahead of the Christmas Market's opening, and the local-visitor burst was timed to start once the separate commuter campaign to the same audience had ended, so the two messages never overlapped.

How it ran

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High-impact display ran with Teads across the full campaign window, weighted toward the tourist burst ahead of the Christmas Market's opening. Meta ran in-feed, Reels and Stories creative across both audiences, with the local-visitor burst starting on 24 November, the day after the earlier commuter campaign ended. The Christmas message itself was folded into the existing Google Search and Performance Max account rather than launched as a new campaign.

What the reporting showed

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Google's integrated message returned the campaign's strongest click-through rate. Within Meta, the tourist day-tripper carousel was the strongest creative, suggesting day-trippers were the audience most ready to act on a Park and Ride message. For Google, we also tracked how many clicks led on to a visit to a Park and Ride site and reported it back to First Bus plainly, so the client could see where digital interest turned into a visit.