According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, travel and tourism generated a direct contribution of $2.3 trillion to global GDPs in 2016 and supported one in 10 jobs in the global economy.
More than three-quarters of that spending - 76.8% - is attributed to leisure travel. It’s a massive market, and one that often starts with a blank slate: Many consumers begin the travel planning process with a simple desire to get away, without a specific idea of where, when and how.
For most travelers, the answers to those questions come through self-directed online research, which they conduct via the web, apps and social media.
So it’s no surprise that travel brands are spending big - very big - on digital marketing as they aim to reach and inspire this receptive audience.
Throughout June, we're looking at a variety of topics under the umbrella of digital marketing.
For the second installment, we explore the power of social media and how it influences consumer behavior, as well as the tactics travel brands are using to grow their reach across social platforms.
Why social?
Travel is inherently a highly personalized experience, an activity that naturally translates to inspiring images, videos and testimonials of what people have seen or done.
Social media is where this content lives, and platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat serve as places of discovery for travelers looking for recommendations from people or brands they trust.
If you are not on Facebook and Instagram, you are missing half of the internet.
Volkan Çağsal - Adphorus
“Social media is fabulous for travel, because it allows advertisers to showcase the experience a trip provides. You can't communicate that in a text ad on a search result,” says paid media specialist Susan Wenograd, who has worked with a number of travel clients.
“When travelers visit a new place, they're there for a limited amount of time, so research and input from others is their best shot at making the most of it. That aspect makes travel brands ripe to experience success in social, because conversation doesn't have to be pushed to get going. Travelers want to talk about places and experiences naturally.”
Compared to search, where marketers target travelers who already have a specific destination in mind, social media creates opportunities to reach people in the inspiration and discovery phase of the funnel.
“Social is a much wider landscape, allowing lesser-known places to help inspire travelers to go there versus somewhere else. It levels the playing field for smaller, boutique hotels, bed and breakfasts, tours and experiences that might struggle to compete against the huge budgets in paid search,” Wenograd says.
“Instead of trying to elbow their way into being an option for people that are closer to purchase, they have the opportunity to appear to users who are just in the beginning stages of looking for inspiration or ideas on their next trip.”
Social media is also where consumers are spending most of their time. According to Volkan Çağsal, founder and CEO of Adphorus, a Facebook and Instagram Marketing Partner acquired by Sojern last year, Facebook’s two billion worldwide users spend 5x more time on the platform than on other travel-related apps, sites and searches.
“Facebook is the most-equipped platform to truly achieve people-based, cross-device targeting and measurement,” he says. “If you are not on Facebook and Instagram, you are missing half of the internet.”
Beyond Facebook
Although consumers are spending considerable time on Facebook, travel brands need to not only target users across various platforms, but also understand the differences among audiences.
“So many times, it can be easy for an advertiser to do some creative, put it up on the platforms and then sit and wait for results to happen,” Wenograd says. “It's important to realize that while social can feel like the same thing with just a different platform name, there are actually very important nuances in each one that affect what you present and how you show it.”
Instagram users, for example, are typically younger and are attracted to images, she says, while the Facebook demographic responds well to video. Pinterest users, she adds, are particularly early on in the consideration cycle, so content along with visuals on that platform is important.
Çağsal says that largely, Facebook and Instagram offer the same opportunity and capabilities for advertisers, but it’s the user behavior that differs across platforms.
Facebook is “more about connecting with friends, and users expect updates from their network,” whereas Instagram is “about trends, influencers, hobbies and role models. Users on Instagram expect to see stunning creatives and become inspired in their areas of interest.”
Paid social doesn't have a silver bullet; it's a process of testing and tweaking a lot of smaller levels just right to get the results you want.
Susan Wenograd
For Hopper, a mobile-only flight-prediction app, it spends 100% of its marketing budget on social media, compared to other online travel agencies and major travel players who spend more than 90% of their budget on Google search.
Simon Lejeune, head of user acquisition at Hopper, says that up until about a year and a half ago, Hopper was spending 100% of its budget on Facebook, but more recently it’s diversified, with 50% of its budget now on Instagram and a good chunk of the rest on Snapchat, Pinterest and Twitter.
For a long time, “Facebook was working, and when something works, you just want to double down,” he says. “Facebook had this really great idea of investing a lot on mobile app user acquisition.”
But as travelers fled to other platforms, Hopper followed. “In the past year, it’s shifted almost entirely to Instagram stories and the Instagram feed and Snapchat. We’re following this audience that’s kind of abandoned the Facebook news feed.”
As consumers starting using Instagram Stories, specifically, the strategy “went from zero to being the top most-consumed placement really, really quickly,” Lejeune says.
Peter Sellis, director of revenue product at Snap Inc., says Snapchat has seen great success with Hopper. Through Snap Ads, which uses the app’s location radius targeting to reach Snapchatters most likely to engage, Snapchat found users were 37% more likely than those on other platforms to “watch a route” from Hopper, and the rate of booking from those watchers was 4x as high as Hopper’s other primary acquisition channels.
Sellis says Snapchat and travel are a natural fit because “location is central to the Snapchat experience, which you don’t see with other apps in the space.” More than 100 million people use the location-based Snap Map every month, he says, and every day billions of snaps are viewed with Geofilters – or artwork that shows where snaps are taken.
“We offer travel brands expressive ad formats and tools that suit the main objectives we see in the industry,” Sellis says, including ads that swipe directly into a booking website, loyalty program sign-up or the app store.
Winning strategies
As digital advertising grows more competitive - with new products and features rolled out every day - travel marketers must keep up with the rapidly changing dynamics, says Çağsal.
He says Adphorus, which counts Expedia, Kayak and Trivago as clients, takes a scientific approach to experimenting and testing to ensure all marketing decisions are backed by data. “Travel marketing science is our framework, and our technology helps our clients test, learn and apply those insights to optimize and further drive performance.”
He also stresses the importance of mobile targeting (“the central focus when it comes to social media strategy”) and cross-device tracking as user behavior continues to shift. “We’ve done multiple tests with our clients where we saw that users will be engaging with the ads on mobile but prefer to complete their booking on desktop,” he says.
“Many brands who are not using cross-device capabilities miss out on key insights here. They would misinterpret this to mean that mobile is not performing when, in fact, the user would not convert without the exposure of mobile ads.”
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Çağsal says social media strategies should also focus on a brand’s real business objectives, whether they’re around bookings or increasing a customer’s lifetime value, and continuous testing for each of those objectives will help determine what works and doesn’t. This, he says, “is the only way for advertisers to lead competition.”
As travel marketers refine their strategies, Wenograd says they need to remain flexible if specific messaging or creative isn’t working. “You'll be surprised by what users respond to. Paid social doesn't have a silver bullet; it's a process of testing and tweaking a lot of smaller levels just right to get the results you want.”
And, advertisers on social media shouldn’t necessarily expect instant results. “I see advertisers make the mistake of automatically assuming because they don't get bookings right away, something is failing,” she says.
“It's crucial to remember that paid social audiences are further out in the buying cycle then searchers are. They have to be talked to, engaged with and convinced a bit more over time. It plays a very large role in the outcomes that are experienced once someone is ready to book or buy, especially in travel, which can have a long consideration period.”
For a Hopper user that downloads the app from an Instagram ad, he or she will only finally make a booking two or three months later, Lejeune says. This three-month period produces the same ROI many other travel players see in Google Adwords after only one day, but for Hopper, it’s about retention.
“For people that have booked with Hopper over the past three years, 50% of them have opened the app in the past 30 days,” he says. “Half of our bookers kind of stay with us forever and use Hopper every other month.”
Lejeune says that, as a mobile-only service, Hopper could change the social media marketing landscape. “The same way large OTAs have mastered search and have become Google’s number one client ... we want to be the same in social media and really pioneer the user acquisition space on social media.”