45 Percent of Travel Marketers Say Ad Spending Won't Return to Pre-Pandemic Level Until at Least 2025
Skift Take
A survey of travel marketers has uncovered a fresh eagerness to experiment with new methods. But the budgets for these new ways to advertise will be slow to return to 2019 levels.
Travel marketers are plotting a return to pre-pandemic levels of digital advertising expenditure in a phased, market-by-market return, according to a survey of 300 travel marketers worldwide that was released this week.
One of the small upsides of the pandemic is that more travelers are booking directly now than they did in the past, according to a survey of senior travel marketers worldwide by WBR (Worldwide Business Research) Insights for travel ad tech firm Sojern.
The shift in behavior is making travel marketers more interested in running "direct response campaigns" in greater proportion to brand campaigns via programmatic display ads.
In contrast, only 39 out of 300 travel marketing executives said that majority of their budgets were on branding or that their budgets were evenly split between branding and performance ads. Those committed to branding are rethinking their approaches, too.
"Hotels will have to reiterate their brand value to consumers through carefully selected marketing campaign themes," said an executive from Singapore's Marina Bay Sands.
Travel Marketers Are Pessimistic About the Recovery's Speed
Companies slashed ad budgets at t
