Travel · Sightseeing cruises · United States

Circle Line can see which channels sell tickets

The client

Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises runs the well-known boat tours around Manhattan in New York City. Most tickets are sold online, and demand swings sharply with the tourist seasons.

The challenge

Circle Line could not connect ticket sales to the marketing that drove them. The measurement setup had no proper attribution, so revenue could not be traced back to channels or campaigns.

That made budget calls in peak season a guess. The team had to decide where to spend at the busiest time of year without knowing what was working.

What we did
GA4 implementationEcommerce trackingAttribution

Funnel mapping

We mapped the ticket purchase journey from landing page through tour selection, date and time, checkout and confirmation. Each step became a defined event in the measurement plan.

GA4 ecommerce tracking

We implemented GA4 ecommerce events across the booking funnel, including product views, add to cart, checkout steps and purchase with revenue. Tour and ticket type are captured as item detail so sales can be broken down by product.

Deployment through GTM

All tracking was deployed through Google Tag Manager with a data layer agreed with the booking platform. This kept tags maintainable and changes quick to publish.

Attribution rework

We restructured how conversions were credited so each sale is assigned to the right source. Campaign tagging rules and cross-domain handling were fixed so sources survive the move into checkout.

QA and handover

We ran test bookings through every path and checked them against reporting. The team was then walked through how to read channel and funnel reports for budget decisions.

What changed
  • Circle Line now has a clean GA4 marketing stack with proper attribution.
  • The team can see which channels drive ticket sales.
  • Seasonal budget allocation is based on data.
  • The funnel is visible from first touchpoint through to completed purchase.
Stack
GA4GTMAttribution modellingEcommerce tracking

Related work

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