Travel Marketing on Cross-Channel TV: A Passport to Success for Advertisers

After over two years of global pandemic-induced conditions, concerns and emergency restrictions and regulations that severely impacted airlines, hotels and tourism programs, it’s wheels up for both travelers and the travel industry.

In fact, the World Travel & Tourism Council has projected that travel and tourism will reach pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022, culminating in a $2 trillion economic recovery. As the United Nations World Tourism Organization calls for the lift of international travel bans, and COVID-19 infection rates subside to endemic levels, the pent-up demand to travel is finally being addressed as more and more consumers schedule trips, flights and stays.

Marketers are responding in kind. According to an industry report from Zenith, the travel sector is set to grow 36.4% year over year in 2022, and so is advertising spend. Zenith projects that travel ad spend will grow as much as six times as ad spend in other industry sectors this year.

Since the travel industry last thrived, travel trends have changed. In mid-pandemic, consumers were mainly booking regional trips with very small groups to avoid crowds and stay within government travel restrictions. Now, there’s greater interest in big trips involving large group gatherings such as cruises, European tours and tropical resort stays.

And Americans in particular are ready to travel, reports show. According to Destination Analysis, 82% of Americans are in a ready-to-travel state of mind – the highest levels since the pandemic officially began in March 2020. More than 92% of respondents plan to take at least one trip in 2022, while the average respondent plans to take three leisure trips this year.

In total, the World Travel & Tourism Council predicts $8.6 trillion in global revenue from travel in 2022 — 6.4% below pre-pandemic levels, but a steady hike from rates from the past two years, according to CNN.

In this playbook, we’ll break down the latest on where the travel business stands (both generally and by sub-sector), what U.S. consumers want, and how travel marketers and advertisers can effectively and cost-efficiently reach them at scale wherever they’re watching or streaming with data-driven, cross-channel TV advertising.

What This Playbook Will Cover:

1. The Economic Recovery’s Impact on Advertising for 2022
2. The post-pandemic comeback: consumer sentiment as travel emerges again
3. The select members: a return to business travel, for some
4. Revived enthusiasm for cruise-goers looking to set sail
5. Checking in with trends in hotel and rental bookings
6. To roll the dice and win, a new era for the casino, gambling and gaming industries
7. Competition on the road for ground transportation
8. New riders look to flock Theme Parks this year
9. Taking flight with the airline industry’s fierce demand and competition
10. Do as the locals do: local tourism programming ramps up, from cities here to cities abroad
11. What’s a travel marketer to do? A passport to success with cross-channel TV advertising