Three ways travel brands can capitalize on pent-up demand

With pandemic restrictions easing in some areas, consumers are ready, and excited, to travel again. Many people are fully vaccinated, tired of being at home and have been saving funds and travel miles to spend on their first opportunity to “revenge travel.” After months of stay-at-home orders, “revenge travel” is how consumers will make up for missed and cancelled trips.

Consumer desire to travel paired with growing confidence in the act of traveling means that demand for these opportunities is back. For travel brands, this is a unique opportunity to reach an audience that is eager to purchase. Here are three digital marketing strategies that travel brands can leverage in 2021 to capitalize on pent-up travel demand.

1. Safety first

While consumers are definitely considering travel, safety is still top of mind. Build consumer confidence by creating messaging that responds to pandemic-related concerns. For example, many airlines are now offering a flexible rebooking policy. By highlighting this policy in their digital campaigns, airlines will capture the interest of hesitant travelers.

The knowledge that an airline offers flexibility builds consumer trust, and may be the deciding factor for that consumer who is on the fence about whether to travel yet. With both new and returning customers, brands can furthermore solidify (or earn!) consumer trust by providing the safe and memorable “return to travel” experience that consumers are looking for.

2. Contextual targeting

Use contextual targeting to reach audiences who are ready to travel again. Contextual advertising uses algorithms to place ads based on keywords, website content and other metadata. This method targets users based on the environment in which an ad appears, placing focus on the consumer’s current frame of mind to show an ad that is hyper relevant.

In harnessing the resurgence of travel, capturing an audience that is currently receptive to travel is the key to success.

Brian Burch

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In harnessing the resurgence of travel, capturing an audience that is currently receptive to travel is the key to success. To best capitalize on the high percentage of people who are considering travel, ensure you are first engaging with those who are most interested - as they will be more likely to book a trip.

Once the dust has settled on the travel resurgence, you can try to spark interest in those who may not have initially shown interest, by leveraging contextual targeting to reengage them. By using contextual advertising to target content like, “best destinations in 2021,” you can reach travelers who are currently eager to travel, or receptive to the idea of traveling this year.

3. Lead with video

Travel is an emotional experience. To capture the interest of your target audience, leverage a channel that speaks to that emotion. Video is an engaging and immersive medium that uses visual cues to create emotion in viewers. Travel brands can use this medium to engage viewers with storytelling and showcase the experiences that they are offering.

By tapping into a viewer’s emotion, your video can entice them to book a staycation at your luxury hotel, or visit your resort for the gorgeous beaches. And when you run your video campaign on connected TV (CTV), you can capture and hold user attention particularly well. CTV’s natural full-screen experience lends itself to highly viewable ads in an environment in which the audience is already engaged.

When watching content through a connected TV device, viewers understand that ads are part of the experience. Knowing this, they tend to be more receptive to them. These benefits combined with CTV’s enhanced targeting options and inventory selection are just part of why we’re seeing CTV overtake linear ad spend.

The travel revival has started, and it isn’t expected to slow down. With these three digital marketing tactics, brands can reach consumers who are ready to travel again, build consumer confidence and immerse viewers in an engaging story. By tapping into pent-up demand now, travel marketers can continue to scale alongside the growing demand for travel in the coming years.