Top 10 Most Popular Travel Brands on YouTube in April

The most engaging videos from travel brands in April featured perspectives of children, spoofs, and teasers to longer content.

Although destinations were the most prolific, videos from airlines had the most views and highest approval ratings. This finding closely correlates with Skift Trends Report about Online Video Strategies in the Travel Industry. Overall, 348 travel brands out of the over 2,000 tracked by SkiftIQ published 2,221 videos throughout the month.

British Airways made it to the top of the list with its “Visit Soon” narrative about an intercontinental relationship between a grade school child in Sydney with her grandparents in London. Two other brands this month harnessed the stories behind children’s ingenuity.

Edmund Thomas Clint was a seven-year-old prodigy, who died of kidney failure in 1983, but not before drawing over 25,000 renderings of Indian folklore and still-lifes. His life’s work was celebrated and featured by Kerala Tourism.

On a lighter note, four young Turkish children eventually directs a Turkish Airlines plane over their DIY landing strip situated in the mountains after multiple attempts.

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Kid’s Rule:
British Airways, Kerela Tourism, and Turkish Airlines

Web teasers that are about 30 seconds long that lead viewers to watch full length versions of the commercial or web series were effective, such as Travel Oklahoma’s “2014 Oklahoma Tourism Commercial” and Walt Disney’s “First Look: Feast Your Eyes On Seven Dwarfs Mine Train Characters.“ 

Jumeirah’s “Wedding in the Skies,” squeezes into the top ten, due to its total views. Besides these online video trailers, Visit Holland’s full-length, premiere episode about its culture’s cool factor did tremendously well. JetBlue’s collaboration with Funny or Die webisode, “Shoo’s Bird’s Eye View,” was heavily viewed, but its approval ratings were under the 0.90 threshold, yet worth mentioning.

Trailers Work:
Jumeirah Hotels and Resorts, Oklahoma Tourism, Walt Disney World Resorts, and Visit Holland

KLM planted a hidden camera in the airport to capture passengers who were willing to unexpectedly relax and recline and rewarded that person with roundtrip business tickets. As part of April Fool’s Day, WestJet Airlines’ vice president of communications “officially” punked the airline’s customers with a how-to video about how simple it is to go metric. Vail ski resort collaborated with world-class skier Lindsey Vonn as she went undercover as sales associates for lift tickets and asks people to sing for free passes.

Laughing Helps:
KLM, WestJet, and Vail

Highest Activity and Approval Ratings

This section highlights days in which we observed a noticeable uptick (two or more standard deviations from the mean) in certain social media measurements, video views, likes, dislikes and comments.

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