85 per cent of travellers plan to take at least two leisure trips in 2023, a great opportunity for advertisers to reach travellers with relevant offers through data-driven advertising.
With leisure travel returning to pre-pandemic levels, and Eid Al Adha as well as school summer holidays rapidly approaching here in the region, now is the opportune time for tourism, travel and hospitality companies to start looking at how to reach summer travellers and potential guests. How? By creating personalised summer campaigns using AI-powered programmatic advertising.
RIGHT MESSAGE, RIGHT TIME
Powered by artificial intelligence, programmatic advertising is a data-driven way of buying and selling advertising spaces across all devices, markets and channels in real time.
It can be used across multiple touchpoints, including display, video, digital audio, connected TV and even digital out-of-home, which means travel and hospitality organisations can reach their target audience whenever and wherever they are online.
Programmatic advertising can also help them measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns, by providing real-time data on impressions, clicks, conversions, and therefore, real business outcomes.
The AI-based technology allows travel, tourism and hospitality marketeers to create personalised ads that reach potential guests based on a variety of factors, for example their interests, location or even external factors like the weather.
By connecting with customers who are more likely to be interested in their offerings, travel companies can increase the chances of conversion.
Think about reaching potential guests in Australia who are heading into winter with summer vacation offers in the Middle East, or those in Europe after a week of summer rain with last-minute offers for a vacation in sunny Dubai.
Dynamic creative optimisation is one aspect of programmatic advertising that creates each advertisement individually based on data available in real-time technology, meaning that an advertiser is able to send the right message at the right time, and actually specifically send the most relevant message to the right audience.
TRAVEL TRENDS AND INSIGHTS
According to a study by American Express, a staggering 85 per cent of travellers plan to take two or more leisure trips in 2023. The top trends this summer are experiential and sustainable travel.
Seventy-four per cent of global travellers care more about creating a travel experience that meets their expectations than about the cost, which is particularly true for Gen-Zs and Millennials.
81 per cent of travellers worldwide state that sustainable travel is important, with 69 per cent planning to travel sustainably this summer and 64 per cent willing to consider less popular destinations to reduce environmental impact.
These traveller preferences can be instrumental in building marketing strategies for travel offerings. For example, if an eco-resort or property offers a unique experiential travel experience, these are the right consumers to reach.
Through programmatic advertising, marketers can create ads that speak to specific traveller interests that resonate with them. This in turn helps increase engagement and drive bookings.
LEVERAGING THE POWER OF AI
With the support of AI, marketeers can accelerate their campaign performance and maximise advertising budgets across channels, audiences and inventory with real-time recommendations.
As opposed to directly booked fixed campaigns, AI can identify the highest-value audience segments and reach the right consumers with precision. For example, The Trade Desk sees more than 1 trillion ad opportunities per day – that’s roughly 13 million every second. To make sense of all that data, AI helps to surface the right ad opportunities, to reach the right consumers, at the right time.
The Marriott hotel chain has been very successful in using programmatic advertising on The Trade Desk platform. By using DCO technology, Marriott was able to boost bookings attributed to its campaign by nearly three times, resulting in a 55 per cent reduction in campaign cost.
With rising demand for travel on and the need to stand out in a competitive landscape, travel firms have a great opportunity to reach target audiences that are right for their brands and offerings by building a media strategy that capitalises on consumer interests and travel plans.
By Terry Kane, Managing Director Middle East & Africa at The Trade Desk
