5 Must-Have Channels to Effectively Promote a Travel Business

Intro

Today's travel industry faces a dynamic and competitive landscape, making innovative marketing strategies crucial for success. There are many ways to promote yourself, but some marketing strategies are especially effective for businesses in the travel industry.

This article discusses the top five channels that promise to promote a travel business effectively, helping brands gain visibility and build lasting relationships with their customers. For each channel, there is a real-life example of how it’s been helpful for a specific brand.

1) A user-friendly website with user-generated content

Higher credibility

A website is often the first point of contact with potential customers, making it the foundation of most marketing strategies. If your website is user-friendly, you’ll create a great first impression of a trustworthy and professional brand.

User-generated content on your website will help grow your brand’s credibility even further. In the travel industry, authenticity is critical. Travel is often associated with going somewhere you’ve never been before, so you mostly rely on other people’s experiences and opinions.

Incorporating genuine reviews, travel stories, or photos from your customers will transform your website into a rich and trustworthy source of information. You’ll also create a relatable narrative that will resonate with your potential customers.

The case of TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is a travel research platform. It has a well-developed website, which is as user-friendly as they come. The design not only encourages exploring different sections of the website but also looks professional and trustworthy.

Image source: TripAdvisor

Initially, TripAdvisor hired content curators to develop content for the website. However, it soon turned out that user-generated content did a much better job of attracting traffic. Ever since, the website has heavily relied on reviews posted by its visitors.

Image source: TripAdvisor

Even when visiting the platform's main page, you can see the importance of user-generated content. The platform actively promotes places with the most and best reviews. Going further, every year, TripAdvisor awards destinations, accommodations, and restaurants with the best reviews collected over the past 12 months.

Image source: TripAdvisor

The platform states that 96% of global TripAdvisor users think reading reviews is important when planning and booking hotels. By allowing visitors to share their genuine experiences and opinions, TripAdvisor has not only enhanced its credibility but has also provided a valuable resource for travelers seeking reliable information. It’s safe to say that this has been one of the main reasons for TripAdvisor’s popularity.

2) Personalized email marketing

Builds a better experience

A personal touch is one of the best ways to build customer relationships in the travel industry, and it's easy to do it with email marketing. Well-personalized emails can help you build the trust and loyalty of your customers and, as a result, increase your sales.

Think about it - the entire travel industry relies heavily on the quality of the experience. Welcome emails, valuable information on the upcoming trip, or exclusive travel deals all build up to that experience. And what better way to share them with your audience than through email marketing?

The case of HotelTonight

HotelTonight is an online platform used for last-minute lodging. The platform’s problem was that the hotel prices included in the emails sent to customers weren’t always the same as on the website. This led to a bad user experience and a lot of chaos. That’s why HotelTonight has decided to start using personalization in their emails.

Image source: e-mail sent by HotelTonight

According to a case study shared by Movable Ink, paying more attention to personalization has helped the platform increase its conversion rate by 26% and lift its average daily rates by $3.

3) TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts

Social media shows a “human face”

Social media channels give the opportunity to show your brand’s identity and reach a broad audience relatively easily. TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube shorts are especially effective thanks to their engaging short-form content.

Travel is a highly visual industry. Short video content is perfect not only for showing your product or service but also for presenting the emotions you offer - in a way that neither pictures nor text can’t match.

TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube shorts highly rely on trends. Participating in them can significantly increase your brand’s visibility without breaking the bank. Moreover, it will help you show your brand’s “human face”, making you much more authentic in the eyes of your potential customers.

The case of Ryanair

Ryanair’s main characteristic is that it offers ultra-low-cost prices for flights - and the brand perfectly uses this in its social media strategy.

Ryanair’s TikTok account consists of simple, funny content that aims to engage the brand’s audience. It’s highly creative but doesn’t use fancy settings or expensive collabs. It works perfectly as a way to create a human connection with Ryanair’s audience. This type of content works - the numbers of likes and comments speak for themselves.

Image source: Ryanair’s Tiktok

Similarly, Ryanair’s Instagram and YouTube content relies on humor. However, on each platform, the brand tries to make slightly different content that will match the target audience. Ryanair’s Instagram mostly consists of “Ryanair memes'' content, while YouTube seems to be mixing both Instagram’s and TitTok’s types of content.

Image source: Ryanair’s Instagram

Ryanair’s social media strategy shows that emotion-driven posts are a great foundation for creating a loyal community. With a little bit of creativity, you won’t need to create a big budget for effective social media marketing - and Ryanair is a great example of that.

4) Networking and partnering

Exposure to new audiences

With the high competition in the travel industry, networking and partnering with other companies might be one of the most effective ways to stand out.

Networking is the first step to take. It allows building strong relationships, which could turn into partnerships in the future. It also keeps you informed about what’s happening in the travel industry, which can help you make more informed decisions for your brand.

Partnering can mean creating joint marketing campaigns, co-branding, or sharing different resources. It doesn’t even have to be a company from the travel industry - as long as you share some goals. This will all help you broaden your audience and allow you to offer more comprehensive products or services - making them even more attractive.

The case of Airbnb + Flipboard

Airbnb - an online accommodation booking platform, and Flipboard - a news aggregator, have created a month-long co-promotion together. Airbnb aimed to promote their new feature called “Airbnb Experiences”. After clicking “Heart” on Flipboard’s stories that featured “Airbnb Experiences”, you’d automatically enter a contest to win a free Airbnb trip.

Image source: Flipboard

This partnership has helped Airbnb get much exposure and generated significant engagement for their new feature. According to Flipboard, the campaign delivered more than 39M targeted campaign impressions, including existing and past readers, as well as new ones.

5) Travel-related events

The benefits

Attending travel-related events is an excellent way of making yourself memorable. Simply put, joining suitable events is like meeting up with your target audience - which is like a paradise for generating leads.

Joining in-person events is the perfect opportunity to show off your service or product. Think of it this way: people who come to travel events are most likely interested in something that your brand offers. If you use the right ways to make them remember you, you’ll probably gain a new customer.

The case of Klook

Klook is an online platform for travel activities that decided to promote itself at one of the travel trade shows back in 2019. The brand’s idea was to offer promotional branded items to people who participated in the event. They gave out reusable plastic bottles with the company’s logo on it.

Image source: Traveler

People who took Klook’s bottles also received business cards with a QR code that led them to the company’s website. There, they could see an offer of signing up on the website in exchange for discounts. This idea gave Klook more than 1,000 leads, some of which later became regular customers.

Conclusion

The proper marketing channels can make a significant difference in a travel brand's success. The five channels discussed in this article - user-friendly websites with user-generated content, personalized email marketing, engaging social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, strategic networking and partnerships, and participation in travel-related events - each offer unique advantages.

Incorporating these channels into a marketing strategy enables travel businesses to connect with their audience in a meaningful way and ultimately drive growth and success in a crowded marketplace.