The Experience Generation: Marketing to the Next-Gen Travellers
In the ever-evolving tourism sector, staying on the pulse of generational shifts and technological advancements is crucial for success. Through the discussion, the speakers uncover how brands can harness the power of social media, influencers and content creators to connect with the next generation of travellers as well as AI's transformative potential in content creation and customer engagement.
In the ever-evolving tourism sector, staying on the pulse of generational shifts and technological advancements is crucial for success. In the second episode of Leading Tourism's Transition experience economy series, Nick Hall and our series co-host, Craig Everett, Co-Founder and CEO of Holibob, are joined by Lottie Norman from The Travel Corporation and Jeremy Jauncey from Beautiful Destinations to delve into how these dynamics are shaping the industry. Through their discussion, they uncover how brands can harness the power of social media, influencers and content creators to connect with the next generation of travellers as well as AI's transformative potential in content creation and customer engagement.
Understanding Generational Shifts
Travel preferences are changing dramatically, driven by generational shifts that demand new approaches to marketing. Lottie emphasises the importance of understanding younger generations, specifically targeting 18 to 35-year-olds through brands like Contiki. As she notes, “Contiki is the original group travel brand for 18 to 35-year-olds exclusively”, highlighting the need for innovation and content that resonates with this demographic. Contiki's Voice of a Generation research provides valuable insights into how to engage these audiences, with the 2024 report surveying 5,600 Gen Z and Millennial travellers. Perhaps most tellingly, the party-hard image is fading for these young globetrotters; a surprising 83% are interested in sober travel experiences, suggesting a shift towards healthier choices and more memorable trips. Defying traditional tourist trails, a massive 88% are keen to discover lesser-known 'destination dupes', while the perennial barrier to exploring remains simple: cost. Surprisingly, these travellers remain somewhat hesitant in using generative AI, with only 17% having used it for booking, though their curiosity is piqued for practical applications like finding recommendations (60%), discounts (62%) and restaurants (58%). Sustainability is also a clear priority for 93%, though the purse strings dictate just how green they can be, with 59% considering it important only if it doesn't add extra cost. These findings paint a picture of a generation seeking authentic, conscious and cost-effective experiences, often forging their own path away from the norms of older generations.
Jeremy expands on how younger travellers are social and mobile-first natives. His perspective underscores the necessity for brands to adapt their strategies to align with these new consumer behaviours and the long educational process needed to help brands be at the cutting edge of this competitive social marketing landscape. It's abundantly clear that social media, and particularly short-form video content, have become profoundly influential, reshaping how younger generations navigate the entire travel funnel. This type of content is now pervasive in the marketing arsenalof travel brands, with the opportunity to create some truly influential and viral content. While early social media focused on inspirational images, today's travellers expect content that goes beyond just wanderlust. Visual and video search will be the future of travel search, with consumers preferring to watch videos over reading long descriptions.
A significant concern raised is the perceived commoditisation of social content. This shift is being driven by the advent of new AI tools, which are "democratising the ability to create video content and create images". While there's scepticism that AI will entirely replace content creators, the challenge for brands lies in ensuring their content remains genuine and impactful amidst this changing landscape. As Lottie outlines, brands like Contiki are addressing this by actively involving their community and past travellers in content creation, such as building a 'Past PAX Community' to road test trips and feature in shoots, providing an "authenticity edge". They have also shifted away from using influencers just once, instead engaging with creators and ambassadors who "truly believe in the brand" for longer-term relationships and building stronger rapport with potential travellers, giving them creative freedom to share authentic experiences. This approach, often focusing on passion-led creators rather than just travel influencers, is seen as crucial for cut-through and driving organic discovery, helping to blend brand broadcast content with through-the-funnel informative content to generate organic searches from visitors who had previously not heard of the brand.
In the digital age, content has become a pivotal tool in engaging audiences and driving conversions. Lottie and Jeremy explore how different types of content can be strategically used throughout the customer journey. Brands need to focus more on making content for each of the stages of the consideration cycle and making each piece distinctly different, moving beyond just inspirational imagery. This involves creating content that is needed throughout the flow to guide travellers, offering educational and practical information rather than just wanderlust content. Authenticity remains absolutely at the core of content. However, as Jeremy points out, there's a recognition that while user-generated content (UGC) can be authentic, it often wasn't "shot for purpose" and may not effectively drive specific marketing outcomes or sales conversions, highlighting the need for content created with clear objectives.
Jeremy also outlines how the post-pandemic work environment has simultaneously fundamentally changed how creative and marketing departments are structured within brands and unlocked a global talent pool – the creator economy – that individual brands previously couldn't access. This decentralised workforce is comprised of individuals who have often taught themselves a wide array of skills, potentially combining roles that traditionally would have been spread across "five, six, maybe even ten roles in a traditional agency" into a single person. This access to highly skilled individuals scattered globally allows brands to tap into a workforce that can potentially be "even better at telling a story of your product for their source market" than the brand itself. Tapping into this creator economy, the Beautiful Destinations Academy, a partnership with the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, blends the content creation curriculum with Dubai's existing tourism and travel marketing college syllabus. The Academy's curriculum includes training in essential content creation skills like colour grading and sound design, as well as teaching creators how to leverage AI to generate numerous content pieces from a single original. This partnership aims to ensure that creators not only excel at making content but also understand the business of travel and tourism, addressing the challenge that many companies face when working with creators who may lack this business knowledge. It's designed to professionalise the creator industry and put more well-rounded creators into the workforce. By providing this combined knowledge, the Academy helps bridge the gap and foster more successful collaborations between brands and creators.
On the other hand, Lottie shares insights into Contiki’s approach, emphasising the significance of storytelling and emotional connection in content. She explains, “Regardless of what you're trying to do, if you have some core principles around your content and what you stand for...then that gives you a bit more of a framework to play with as things change”. With the digital landscape more fragmented than ever before, this presents a significant challenge for brands in navigating the myriad platforms and capturing fleeting attention. Content needs to feel personal and be entertaining, with younger generations expecting discovery, validation and booking all in one flow. With attention becoming a commodity and travellers expecting value and engagement in seconds across various touchpoints, the need to be on the pulse and reactive is paramount. This is where AI is emerging as a critical ally, not necessarily replacing the authentic content creator, but acting as a powerful enabler. This ability to quickly process data helps brands not only identify what content resonates but also understand on which platforms that content will be most impactful, allowing them to provide personalised value and guide consumers effectively throughout the entire travel funnel, moving beyond simple inspiration.
The Role of AI in Travel Marketing
With AI streamlining operations through workflow efficiencies and enhancing consumer interactions, Lottie emphasises the need to "get rid of the scaremongering around it" to help marketing teams embrace the potential of the technology and consider it as a trustworthy partner for supporting experience discovery. Jeremy highlights AI's role in pre-production and data analysis, with “a hundred world-class creative directors at the palm of our hand as a thought partner”. This capability speeds up the process of developing big data-informed creative ideas and the preparation of impactful briefs that better understand brand ambitions and current social performance trends.
Advancements in generative AI are also enabling brands to take a piece of content that performed well and make multiple different variants for various platforms. This capacity for generating numerous creative iterations supports technology-enabled testing with support from media buying partners, providing crucial insights into engagement and conversion. As Craig references, the implementation of AI tools, such as Cursor, is enabling major productivity gains and automated testing, with Holibob's tech team having "doubled their output in the matter of a couple of months and developing features in days that would've taken weeks".
Jeremy also touched upon AI's potential in improving customer journeys, particularly by providing personalised experiences and content through AI-driven trip planning. He highlights Beautiful Destinations' AI assistant Layla, which enables users to directly message to inquire about anything related to travel. Functioning with underlying integrations to Booking.com and Skyscanner, Layla displays search results using Beautiful Destinations videos and content from other creators. While the aim was for seamless booking, travellers are not yet moving directly to buy through conversations with Layla. Instead, its key value lies in providing knowledge and insight, with interactions often lasting 12-15 minutes. By engaging users through conversational interfaces, Layla is able to gather a significantly deeper understanding of their needs than traditional website booking flows, using this rich data to produce highly personalised travel suggestions and bespoke itineraries with remarkable speed. With travellers seeing the value in subscribing to this service, this demonstrates Layla's role in supporting trip planning by offering a sophisticated, data-informed advisory layer. Recognising that despite generative AI not being a solution for all marketing needs, Jeremy believes that the intermediary value of AI tools and the ability to store data and create bespoke itineraries based on these conversational interactions will enable an "understanding of that consumer's needs that is a hundred times what you get when they go through the process of booking on your website".
Similarly, Lottie explored the potential of voice activation through Contiki's development of an Alexa packing guide skill. The concept aimed to engage users who were engrossed in the content or planning journey, offering them the chance to put down a deposit at a special rate upon completing the guide. This initiative was a test to understand user willingness to commit financially within such a voice-activated environment, especially when presented with a strong value exchange. However, the uptake wasn't as strong as expected. This limited performance highlights the challenge brands face when entering perceived private spaces, as users tend to "back off quite quickly" when a brand becomes too tactical or pushes for conversion within that environment. While users might engage with utility content, they prefer making purchase decisions "on their own terms and on their own time" rather than being immediately converted within a voice-activated or messaging space. In avoiding being intrusive, providing the ability to request WhatsApp or social chats with brand ambassadors can be a key tactic for enabling conversion.
Navigating Challenges and Seizing Opportunities
The conversation also reveals some of the significant challenges the travel industry faces. Engagement in social channels often serves an upper-funnel purpose, and brands face the challenge of proving performance and ROI from content that drives discussion but not immediate booking. As Craig points out, “95% of the traffic that we generate originates from either WhatsApp, SMS, WeChat or Telegram because email does not convert”. While social channels and messaging apps demonstrate strong engagement, such as click-through rates of over 30%, translating this into direct conversion, particularly for cross-selling experiences, presents significant challenges. There's a notable hurdle in connecting the conversations and discovery happening within Instagram DMs or WhatsApp groups back to the platforms where the actual purchase happens, requiring further support and relationship building with the major social media and messaging platforms. Yet, the opportunities these challenges bring are immense, encouraging brands to be adaptive and strategic in their approaches.
Underscoring the increasing potential and conversation around social commerce within travel, Jeremy suggests a significant shift where platforms are moving beyond just inspiration to potentially facilitating the entire traveller journey. Travellers are already using social platforms and messaging apps for active research and planning. The strong conviction is that "it is only a matter of time before the ability to then move into that final transaction happens within that social space". The emergence of TikTok shoppers is just one clear sign that this new social-first approach to conversion will be here to stay. This will be enabled by tight integrations of messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, into Meta's social suites, reducing the number of websites viewed in the research phase of trip planning.
Jeremy’s account of China’s integration of video in booking processes and the role of super apps like WeChat serves as an example of where the global market could be heading, reminding us that the barrier to integrating seamless travel transactions with digital content is not insurmountable. China is perceived as "way ahead of us when it comes to buying through social". The Mafengwo model in China, which layers social video content over Trip.com, serves as an example of how video from social networks can drive transactions. Although integrating brands into these often "closed, private spaces" presents a "big hurdle", especially with travel being less of an impulse purchase than the retail products already common in social commerce and a lack of clearly defined conversion metrics.
Ultimately, the challenge of capturing fleeting attention has created a significant dilemma for CMOs, raising questions about the most effective operational model to achieve the required speed and scale in content production. With the need for "always-on, quick, snackable content that you can do at scale", brands are beginning to question whether traditional structures, such as a "small social team" or a "big outsource agency" are best equipped to deliver this. Lottie acknowledges that "operating models to reach scale is definitely the biggest challenge" currently being discussed at "all the CMO tables". While large agencies may sometimes struggle with the rapid pace needed for this type of content, simply having a small in-house team might lack the sheer capacity required to be consistently relevant across numerous platforms. Finding the right blend and being structured to "execute at the speed and scale that we need to be relevant" is a paramount concern.
Key Takeaways
The tourism industry stands at a pivotal moment, demanding that brands rapidly recalibrate their content and influencer strategies to align with the dynamic habits of travellers and evolve with technological advancements and generational expectations, paving the way for a more dynamic, responsive and success-driven travel industry future. As younger generations increasingly seek authentic, value-driven and conscious experiences through mobile-first, visually-rich content, simply inspiring wanderlust is no longer enough. Similarly, the strategic embrace of AI is no longer optional as a tool for accelerating content creation and personalising outreach. Marketing success now hinges on the ability to navigate the complexities of proving return on investment in a social-first world and preparing for the inevitable shift of the entire booking journey into the social sphere.
Here are the key takeaways:
Brands must tailor their marketing strategies to meet the expectations and behaviours of younger travellers, leveraging platforms and content styles that resonate with them.
Successful content not only inspires but also educates and supports visitors at every stage of their journey. Building lasting relationships with true ambassadors can enhance brand authenticity and reach.
AI is a powerful enabler in content creation, consumer insights and personalised marketing, shaping a more efficient and targeted travel marketing landscape.
While private messaging platforms pose challenges for direct conversions, they are critical touchpoints for customer engagement and brand storytelling.
As the travel industry continues to evolve, embracing new technologies and creative strategies is paramount for staying competitive and engaging the next generation of travellers.
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In the ever-evolving tourism sector, staying on the pulse of generational shifts and technological advancements is crucial for success. In the second episode of Leading Tourism's Transition experience economy series, Nick Hall and our series co-host, Craig Everett, Co-Founder and CEO of Holibob, are joined by Lottie Norman from The Travel Corporation and Jeremy Jauncey from Beautiful Destinations to delve into how these dynamics are shaping the industry. Through their discussion, they uncover how brands can harness the power of social media, influencers and content creators to connect with the next generation of travellers as well as AI's transformative potential in content creation and customer engagement.
Understanding Generational Shifts
Travel preferences are changing dramatically, driven by generational shifts that demand new approaches to marketing. Lottie emphasises the importance of understanding younger generations, specifically targeting 18 to 35-year-olds through brands like Contiki. As she notes, “Contiki is the original group travel brand for 18 to 35-year-olds exclusively”, highlighting the need for innovation and content that resonates with this demographic. Contiki's Voice of a Generation research provides valuable insights into how to engage these audiences, with the 2024 report surveying 5,600 Gen Z and Millennial travellers. Perhaps most tellingly, the party-hard image is fading for these young globetrotters; a surprising 83% are interested in sober travel experiences, suggesting a shift towards healthier choices and more memorable trips. Defying traditional tourist trails, a massive 88% are keen to discover lesser-known 'destination dupes', while the perennial barrier to exploring remains simple: cost. Surprisingly, these travellers remain somewhat hesitant in using generative AI, with only 17% having used it for booking, though their curiosity is piqued for practical applications like finding recommendations (60%), discounts (62%) and restaurants (58%). Sustainability is also a clear priority for 93%, though the purse strings dictate just how green they can be, with 59% considering it important only if it doesn't add extra cost. These findings paint a picture of a generation seeking authentic, conscious and cost-effective experiences, often forging their own path away from the norms of older generations.
Jeremy expands on how younger travellers are social and mobile-first natives. His perspective underscores the necessity for brands to adapt their strategies to align with these new consumer behaviours and the long educational process needed to help brands be at the cutting edge of this competitive social marketing landscape. It's abundantly clear that social media, and particularly short-form video content, have become profoundly influential, reshaping how younger generations navigate the entire travel funnel. This type of content is now pervasive in the marketing arsenalof travel brands, with the opportunity to create some truly influential and viral content. While early social media focused on inspirational images, today's travellers expect content that goes beyond just wanderlust. Visual and video search will be the future of travel search, with consumers preferring to watch videos over reading long descriptions.
A significant concern raised is the perceived commoditisation of social content. This shift is being driven by the advent of new AI tools, which are "democratising the ability to create video content and create images". While there's scepticism that AI will entirely replace content creators, the challenge for brands lies in ensuring their content remains genuine and impactful amidst this changing landscape. As Lottie outlines, brands like Contiki are addressing this by actively involving their community and past travellers in content creation, such as building a 'Past PAX Community' to road test trips and feature in shoots, providing an "authenticity edge". They have also shifted away from using influencers just once, instead engaging with creators and ambassadors who "truly believe in the brand" for longer-term relationships and building stronger rapport with potential travellers, giving them creative freedom to share authentic experiences. This approach, often focusing on passion-led creators rather than just travel influencers, is seen as crucial for cut-through and driving organic discovery, helping to blend brand broadcast content with through-the-funnel informative content to generate organic searches from visitors who had previously not heard of the brand.
In the digital age, content has become a pivotal tool in engaging audiences and driving conversions. Lottie and Jeremy explore how different types of content can be strategically used throughout the customer journey. Brands need to focus more on making content for each of the stages of the consideration cycle and making each piece distinctly different, moving beyond just inspirational imagery. This involves creating content that is needed throughout the flow to guide travellers, offering educational and practical information rather than just wanderlust content. Authenticity remains absolutely at the core of content. However, as Jeremy points out, there's a recognition that while user-generated content (UGC) can be authentic, it often wasn't "shot for purpose" and may not effectively drive specific marketing outcomes or sales conversions, highlighting the need for content created with clear objectives.
Jeremy also outlines how the post-pandemic work environment has simultaneously fundamentally changed how creative and marketing departments are structured within brands and unlocked a global talent pool – the creator economy – that individual brands previously couldn't access. This decentralised workforce is comprised of individuals who have often taught themselves a wide array of skills, potentially combining roles that traditionally would have been spread across "five, six, maybe even ten roles in a traditional agency" into a single person. This access to highly skilled individuals scattered globally allows brands to tap into a workforce that can potentially be "even better at telling a story of your product for their source market" than the brand itself. Tapping into this creator economy, the Beautiful Destinations Academy, a partnership with the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, blends the content creation curriculum with Dubai's existing tourism and travel marketing college syllabus. The Academy's curriculum includes training in essential content creation skills like colour grading and sound design, as well as teaching creators how to leverage AI to generate numerous content pieces from a single original. This partnership aims to ensure that creators not only excel at making content but also understand the business of travel and tourism, addressing the challenge that many companies face when working with creators who may lack this business knowledge. It's designed to professionalise the creator industry and put more well-rounded creators into the workforce. By providing this combined knowledge, the Academy helps bridge the gap and foster more successful collaborations between brands and creators.
On the other hand, Lottie shares insights into Contiki’s approach, emphasising the significance of storytelling and emotional connection in content. She explains, “Regardless of what you're trying to do, if you have some core principles around your content and what you stand for...then that gives you a bit more of a framework to play with as things change”. With the digital landscape more fragmented than ever before, this presents a significant challenge for brands in navigating the myriad platforms and capturing fleeting attention. Content needs to feel personal and be entertaining, with younger generations expecting discovery, validation and booking all in one flow. With attention becoming a commodity and travellers expecting value and engagement in seconds across various touchpoints, the need to be on the pulse and reactive is paramount. This is where AI is emerging as a critical ally, not necessarily replacing the authentic content creator, but acting as a powerful enabler. This ability to quickly process data helps brands not only identify what content resonates but also understand on which platforms that content will be most impactful, allowing them to provide personalised value and guide consumers effectively throughout the entire travel funnel, moving beyond simple inspiration.
The Role of AI in Travel Marketing
With AI streamlining operations through workflow efficiencies and enhancing consumer interactions, Lottie emphasises the need to "get rid of the scaremongering around it" to help marketing teams embrace the potential of the technology and consider it as a trustworthy partner for supporting experience discovery. Jeremy highlights AI's role in pre-production and data analysis, with “a hundred world-class creative directors at the palm of our hand as a thought partner”. This capability speeds up the process of developing big data-informed creative ideas and the preparation of impactful briefs that better understand brand ambitions and current social performance trends.
Advancements in generative AI are also enabling brands to take a piece of content that performed well and make multiple different variants for various platforms. This capacity for generating numerous creative iterations supports technology-enabled testing with support from media buying partners, providing crucial insights into engagement and conversion. As Craig references, the implementation of AI tools, such as Cursor, is enabling major productivity gains and automated testing, with Holibob's tech team having "doubled their output in the matter of a couple of months and developing features in days that would've taken weeks".
Jeremy also touched upon AI's potential in improving customer journeys, particularly by providing personalised experiences and content through AI-driven trip planning. He highlights Beautiful Destinations' AI assistant Layla, which enables users to directly message to inquire about anything related to travel. Functioning with underlying integrations to Booking.com and Skyscanner, Layla displays search results using Beautiful Destinations videos and content from other creators. While the aim was for seamless booking, travellers are not yet moving directly to buy through conversations with Layla. Instead, its key value lies in providing knowledge and insight, with interactions often lasting 12-15 minutes. By engaging users through conversational interfaces, Layla is able to gather a significantly deeper understanding of their needs than traditional website booking flows, using this rich data to produce highly personalised travel suggestions and bespoke itineraries with remarkable speed. With travellers seeing the value in subscribing to this service, this demonstrates Layla's role in supporting trip planning by offering a sophisticated, data-informed advisory layer. Recognising that despite generative AI not being a solution for all marketing needs, Jeremy believes that the intermediary value of AI tools and the ability to store data and create bespoke itineraries based on these conversational interactions will enable an "understanding of that consumer's needs that is a hundred times what you get when they go through the process of booking on your website".
Similarly, Lottie explored the potential of voice activation through Contiki's development of an Alexa packing guide skill. The concept aimed to engage users who were engrossed in the content or planning journey, offering them the chance to put down a deposit at a special rate upon completing the guide. This initiative was a test to understand user willingness to commit financially within such a voice-activated environment, especially when presented with a strong value exchange. However, the uptake wasn't as strong as expected. This limited performance highlights the challenge brands face when entering perceived private spaces, as users tend to "back off quite quickly" when a brand becomes too tactical or pushes for conversion within that environment. While users might engage with utility content, they prefer making purchase decisions "on their own terms and on their own time" rather than being immediately converted within a voice-activated or messaging space. In avoiding being intrusive, providing the ability to request WhatsApp or social chats with brand ambassadors can be a key tactic for enabling conversion.
Navigating Challenges and Seizing Opportunities
The conversation also reveals some of the significant challenges the travel industry faces. Engagement in social channels often serves an upper-funnel purpose, and brands face the challenge of proving performance and ROI from content that drives discussion but not immediate booking. As Craig points out, “95% of the traffic that we generate originates from either WhatsApp, SMS, WeChat or Telegram because email does not convert”. While social channels and messaging apps demonstrate strong engagement, such as click-through rates of over 30%, translating this into direct conversion, particularly for cross-selling experiences, presents significant challenges. There's a notable hurdle in connecting the conversations and discovery happening within Instagram DMs or WhatsApp groups back to the platforms where the actual purchase happens, requiring further support and relationship building with the major social media and messaging platforms. Yet, the opportunities these challenges bring are immense, encouraging brands to be adaptive and strategic in their approaches.
Underscoring the increasing potential and conversation around social commerce within travel, Jeremy suggests a significant shift where platforms are moving beyond just inspiration to potentially facilitating the entire traveller journey. Travellers are already using social platforms and messaging apps for active research and planning. The strong conviction is that "it is only a matter of time before the ability to then move into that final transaction happens within that social space". The emergence of TikTok shoppers is just one clear sign that this new social-first approach to conversion will be here to stay. This will be enabled by tight integrations of messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, into Meta's social suites, reducing the number of websites viewed in the research phase of trip planning.
Jeremy’s account of China’s integration of video in booking processes and the role of super apps like WeChat serves as an example of where the global market could be heading, reminding us that the barrier to integrating seamless travel transactions with digital content is not insurmountable. China is perceived as "way ahead of us when it comes to buying through social". The Mafengwo model in China, which layers social video content over Trip.com, serves as an example of how video from social networks can drive transactions. Although integrating brands into these often "closed, private spaces" presents a "big hurdle", especially with travel being less of an impulse purchase than the retail products already common in social commerce and a lack of clearly defined conversion metrics.
Ultimately, the challenge of capturing fleeting attention has created a significant dilemma for CMOs, raising questions about the most effective operational model to achieve the required speed and scale in content production. With the need for "always-on, quick, snackable content that you can do at scale", brands are beginning to question whether traditional structures, such as a "small social team" or a "big outsource agency" are best equipped to deliver this. Lottie acknowledges that "operating models to reach scale is definitely the biggest challenge" currently being discussed at "all the CMO tables". While large agencies may sometimes struggle with the rapid pace needed for this type of content, simply having a small in-house team might lack the sheer capacity required to be consistently relevant across numerous platforms. Finding the right blend and being structured to "execute at the speed and scale that we need to be relevant" is a paramount concern.
Key Takeaways
The tourism industry stands at a pivotal moment, demanding that brands rapidly recalibrate their content and influencer strategies to align with the dynamic habits of travellers and evolve with technological advancements and generational expectations, paving the way for a more dynamic, responsive and success-driven travel industry future. As younger generations increasingly seek authentic, value-driven and conscious experiences through mobile-first, visually-rich content, simply inspiring wanderlust is no longer enough. Similarly, the strategic embrace of AI is no longer optional as a tool for accelerating content creation and personalising outreach. Marketing success now hinges on the ability to navigate the complexities of proving return on investment in a social-first world and preparing for the inevitable shift of the entire booking journey into the social sphere.
Here are the key takeaways:
Brands must tailor their marketing strategies to meet the expectations and behaviours of younger travellers, leveraging platforms and content styles that resonate with them.
Successful content not only inspires but also educates and supports visitors at every stage of their journey. Building lasting relationships with true ambassadors can enhance brand authenticity and reach.
AI is a powerful enabler in content creation, consumer insights and personalised marketing, shaping a more efficient and targeted travel marketing landscape.
While private messaging platforms pose challenges for direct conversions, they are critical touchpoints for customer engagement and brand storytelling.
As the travel industry continues to evolve, embracing new technologies and creative strategies is paramount for staying competitive and engaging the next generation of travellers.
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