Why Travel Brands Should Be Spending More on Media

Travel brands could increase media investment by 275% and every extra pound would still pay back at least a pound in profit.

That was one of my biggest cartoon-sized eyeball moments reading The Growth Gap from Thinkbox and WPP Media. Travel and transport came out with more profitable headroom than any other sector. The next closest, retail, was 131%.

Search captures demand. It doesn’t create it.

A lot of travel marketing is built around the moment someone searches. The Growth Gap numbers suggest that approach is leaving money on the table.

Search captures demand that already exists. It doesn’t do much to create it. Getting a brand into someone’s head before they start planning a trip happens earlier, and away from the results page.

Most of your future customers aren’t thinking about you yet

Travel is a category people buy from infrequently. That means most of your future customers aren’t thinking about you right now. You need to reach them anyway, so that when they do start planning, you’re already on the list.

Where we’d put the money

The report doesn’t say where the extra investment should go. But in our travel work at Propellernet, moving budget up the funnel rather than piling more into search has paid off.

Our Lapland campaign for Inghams is a good example. Inghams was up against rivals with bigger budgets and stronger brand recognition, in a short and crowded booking window. Rather than competing harder in search, we built awareness earlier with a programmatic campaign across connected TV, audio and display, led by premium CTV placements on Disney+.

The channels worked best together. People who saw both the CTV and display ads converted at a 226% higher rate, with awareness driving performance.

If you’re figuring out how to grow your travel brand’s media investment profitably, get in touch, or check out more of our Insights below. You can also read more on The Drum.