Pressure to perform is driving travel brands’ marketing strategies

Pressure to perform is driving travel brands’ marketing strategies

More than three quarters of global travel brands have admitted they are under increased pressure to measure the impact of all their marketing activities, according to a new survey. The study, conducted in May by Performance Horizon and WBR Digital, saw 78 travel executive respond answering a series of questions on their firm’s marketing strategies. … Continue reading Pressure to perform is driving travel brands’ marketing strategies

More than three quarters of global travel brands have admitted they are under increased pressure to measure the impact of all their marketing activities, according to a new survey.

The study, conducted in May by Performance Horizon and WBR Digital, saw 78 travel executive respond answering a series of questions on their firm’s marketing strategies.

Of those 77% said the pressure or desire to measure business impact has increased while 23% said it had remained the same.

Asked to rank activities in order of importance for customer acquisition the study found organic search in top followed by email marketing, paid search, social media and retargeting.

Asked the same question in relation to customer retention the top five mix changed to email marketing, social media, retargeting, organic search and paid search.

Mobile marketing, comparison shopping engines and affiliate marketing were outside of the top five for both acquisition and retention.

The study also found there was a desire for travel reward marketing partners and affiliates based on performance across more of their channels.

The report states: “The ability to directly reward the creation of a desired result simplifies marketing investment , which can be highly convenient.

“Based on these figures, the increased adoption of performance marketing with the digital travel industry is a trend that is set to continue.”

Respondents ranked paid search, email and SEO as the areas commanding the biggest budgets, although there was high expectation of increased mobile bookings.

Some 87% said they expected mobile app bookings to increase in 2016, while that figures rose to 97% for mobile web.

Performance marketing was found to drive at least 20% of revenues for 59% of respondents with the top 7% generating 80% of their annual income from performance marketing programmes.

The report says: “The extent of confidence that brands place in performance-based programmes…suggest that these brand shave a degree of expertise and familiarity with performance marketing models and understand the value they can drive.”

The Benchmarking Performance Marketing and Digital Strategy in the Travel Industry report is available here