One of the better parts of the job is working on travel brands.
And the downside is the constant FOMO from watching other people explore the world while you're sat at a desk.
Different regions, different models, different scales.
Long enough to see what consistently works, and what doesn't.
The ones that grow aren't doing anything especially clever
They're just doing the fundamentals properly, across multiple channels, and sticking with it long enough for it to compound.
And usually, the product is good. The experience is good. People come back from the trip and tell their friends it was worth it.
That matters more than anything marketing can do.
Marketing doesn't fix a weak travel product.
But it does accelerate a good one.
Travel doesn't behave like ecommerce, even though it looks like it should
It's easy to treat travel like ecommerce.
You've got products. Pricing. A checkout.
Drive traffic, show options, convert.
But the behaviour behind it is different.
People don't wake up and instantly book a trip.
They start somewhere loose.
Flights to Thailand.
Hotels in Sydney.
Best places to go in July.
They click around. Compare. Send links. Leave. Come back later.
Sometimes weeks later.
There's a gap between first interaction and booking.
That gap is where most of the marketing actually happens.
Search is where it shows up, not where it starts
Search still matters.
If someone types "group tours Vietnam" or "best Thailand tour company", you want to be there.
That's high intent.
But a lot of those searches are influenced by things that happened earlier.
Something they saw. Something they heard. Something someone else did.
Then they search.
And it looks like search did the work.
It didn't.
Search is where the decision shows up. Not where it started.
Most performance comes from how channels work together
This is where most travel setups fall down.
Channels get split out and measured in isolation.
Search here. Social there. Email somewhere in the background.
But the performance doesn't come from any one of them.
It comes from how they stack.
When it's working properly:
- Search captures demand when it exists
- Paid social keeps you visible while people are deciding
- Video builds familiarity before intent is obvious
- Display extends reach
- Email brings people back when timing lines up
Take one of those out and something else has to work harder.
Paid social is doing more than it gets credit for
Social gets judged on direct conversion.
That's usually the wrong lens.
In travel, it's mostly about staying visible while people are in that in-between phase.
The category helps.
You've got content people actually want to look at.
Places. People. Experiences.
The effect isn't always immediate.
Someone sees something. Scrolls past. Sees it again later.
Then eventually starts looking properly.
That familiarity matters.
And there's always a bit of FOMO in travel.
You see other people doing something you could be doing.
That sticks more than people realise.
Attention is easy. Booking is the hard part
Travel is very good at generating attention.
Nice visuals. Strong engagement. Easy clicks.
But attention isn't the problem.
Conversion is.
A lot of travel sites still behave like brochures.
They look good, but they don't answer what people actually want to know:
What's included? What does the trip actually look like day to day? Who is it for? What's it really like?
That's where most of the drop-off happens.
Reviews do more work than most campaigns
This is one of the biggest levers.
People trust other travellers more than they trust brands.
Strong reviews answer the question people actually care about:
"Did this work for someone like me?"
And they don't just help conversion.
They lift everything around it:
- search click-through
- landing page performance
- overall trust
SEO is still doing a lot of the heavy lifting
Quietly.
Consistently.
Travel is one of the categories where SEO still matters a lot.
Because the searches are specific and high intent.
Destination queries. Comparison queries. Timing queries. Practical questions.
If your pages are built properly, they pick up traffic over time.
And that traffic converts.
It also gives you a base layer.
You're not paying for every click.
You're not dependent on one channel.
Reddit is creeping into the decision process
This is newer, but noticeable.
More travel searches are surfacing Reddit threads.
People trust them.
They read them properly.
"Is this tour worth it?"
"Best group tours Thailand?"
"Anyone done this?"
It's not polished, but it's real.
And with AI systems pulling heavily from that kind of content, it's showing up more often.
Even if you're not actively using Reddit, it's shaping perception.
Email still closes more than people expect
It's not a headline channel, but it matters.
People don't always book on first visit.
They browse. Leave. Come back later.
Email reconnects that.
Reminders. Offers. Timing.
Simple, but effective.
And often the difference between interest and action.
Seasonality is still the biggest lever, and the biggest trap
Travel isn't steady.
You get peaks.
January is strong. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now even bigger.
But they've become crowded.
What used to be a short window is now weeks of discounting.
Everyone pushes. Everyone extends.
That creates problems:
- Costs go up
- Competition increases
- Margins get squeezed
- Customers wait for deals
You end up with a cycle.
Strong peaks. Weaker in-between periods.
The better operators smooth it out
You still use those moments.
They work.
But you don't rely on them entirely.
The businesses that grow more consistently:
- Stay visible outside sale periods
- Build demand before people are ready
- Avoid training customers to only buy on discount
It's less dramatic.
But more stable.
Final thought
None of this is complicated.
It just takes consistency.
Travel marketing works best when:
- multiple channels are doing different jobs
- the brand is visible before people search
- trust is built through real experiences
- and everything is measured against bookings, not just activity
If the product is good, people talk about it, and the experience delivers, marketing has something to amplify.
If not, it struggles.
That's usually the difference.
