It’s not just the promise of new scenery that inspires us to travel, but the prospect of change itself. We want our journeys to transform and construct us as individuals, and leave marvelous tales to reminisce upon with friends and family. When online social atmospheres surround us with the the stories, impressions and memories of others, it’s only natural that we crave a remarkable, personalized adventure, on that brings a sense of freshness strong enough to separate us entirely from our day to day grind.
Individualized travel plans are demonstrably preferable to generic vacations, according to 85% of respondents in a study by American Express. This study, and many others like it strongly validate the impression left when browsing travel oriented digital media: that the majority of travelers, regardless of age, do, in fact, prefer to travel on their own terms. Digital marketers are catching on to this push for experience-based personalization in travel, and to a degree, they are actually manufacturing it.
As drivers of the $7.5 trillion tourism industry, online travel advertisers have trillions of incentives to better facilitate specific consumer wishes. Consider how a recent upswing in concert and music festival attendances directly corresponds with a drop in spending on recorded and produced audio; also consider how Coachella’s marketing team engages music fans across over a dozen social media platforms, and uses trackable URLs and data analytics to develop and advertise an interactive app for streamlining logistics and connecting concert attendees.
Coachella’s ad team succeeds in drawing crowds from across the globe because they acknowledged a vital travel fact: unique experience is in, while passive activity is fading in popularity, especially among millennials. By enabling relevant tools, and allying themselves with platforms that paint travel as a type of social capital, to be collected and exchanged among friends and followers, digital marketers insert themselves into the conversation, not as interruptions, but as complementary assistants in facilitating wild dreams of travel.
Big data plays a major role in allowing digital marketers to pinpoint and cultivate vacationers’ travel preferences. According to a report by Selligent, 83% of millennials are willing to allow travel brands to track their digital history, if the tradeoff results in travel options better calibrated to personal tastes.
Travel marketing teams may hire online marketing companies such as Net Conversion, or ActionX, which perform data-oriented services like tracking search keywords to enable targeted advertising. For instance, a customer concerned with pricing who searches for accommodations using keywords such as “cheap” or “budget” might receive banner ads depicting value hotel deals. In this way, advertisers create personalized travel where it may not otherwise exist; without targeted ads, those travelers looking for budget hotels might never have found an option tailored specifically to fit their needs.
There is an exciting development on the horizon, one which unites AI with big data to metamorphosize travel marketing. The introduction of virtual travel assistants could allow smartphone users to access an automated service (provided by travel companies) for personalized suggestions on local restaurants, attractions, and activities according to predetermined criteria. One survey reveals that 94% of Tripadvisor’s 300 million users already use smartphones to research localized information, and virtual assistants such as Google’s Assistant and Siri were popularized years ago. Combining and simplifying these processes using automated assistance to channel user data, and craft ideal search results seems like a logical next step. Online booking service HotelTonight has already taken the AI initiative, creating a virtual concierge function accessible throughout over 30 cities.
Any marketer can confirm that travel trends exist in a state of flux, however our desire for a more personalized travel experience shows no indication of disappearing; it’s a sentiment constructed by a digital marketing strategy which employs data-based insights to offer unique options, and kept alive by the innate magnetism of the unfamiliar and extraordinary.