Skift Take
Travel articles often have the power to connect with all five senses in ways photos and videos can't but the moral here is any multimedia travel content needs good writing to appeal to a millennial audience.
Quality written content will always have a place card at any content strategy meeting and travel marketers trying to reach a millennial audience should know that articles are the most popular travel content consumed by this age group, a new survey found.
Yahoo Travel asked 700 U.S. millennial travelers ages 18 to 34 what type of travel content inspires them to book a trip (other U.S. adult travelers ages 35 to 54 were also part of the overall survey). While the percentages of millennials favoring travel articles and photos are close the articles edge out photos by 2 percentage points (79% vs. 77% for photos). Online travel videos are the third most popular medium viewed (64%) and these numbers underscore how videos and photos usually need supplemental text to give travelers more context, millennials or otherwise.
Of course millennials are notorious for their online binging habits and short attention spans, and they crave multiple media types. But the millennials part of this survey evidently feel written content bears equal if not a little more importance than other multimedia content meant to inspire the senses even further than words.
When thinking how to craft multimedia travel content, themes focused on dining, shopping and adventure are particular draws for millennial viewers. This group also prefers content about destinations (74%) and travel activities (68%) more so than accommodations (60%), cruises (48%) and flights (37%).
Respondents also indicated they’d taken an average of three domestic trips and two international trips during the past 12 months and the percentage of millennials taking domestic trips overwhelming trounce international trips, 78% vs. 22%.
Percentage of Millennial Travelers Who Said They Consume Travel Articles, Photos and Videos the Most and Breakdowns
| Articles (79%) | Photos (77%) | Videos (64%) |
|---|---|---|
| Read articles about destinations (52%) | Look at photos of travel destinations (52%) | Watch videos about destinations (35%) |
| Read articles about travel activities (41%) | Look at general travel photos (47%) | Watch videos about travel activities (30%) |
| Read articles about travel deals (40%) | Look at photos of travel activities (44%) | Watch general travel videos (28%) |
Source: Yahoo Travel
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Tags: content marketing, millennials
Photo credit: Millennials doing the selfie thing. Daniel Lee / Flickr