TRAVELLERS HOW TO REACH THROUGH SMART SUMMER CAMPAIGNS

85 percent 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

BY TERRY KANE, MANAGING DIRECTOR MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA AT THE TRADE DESK

With leisure travel returning to prepandemic 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.

The right message at the right time Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), programmatic advertising is a datadriven 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.

AI-based technology allows travel, tourism, and hospitality marketeers to create personalised ads that reach potential guests based on a variety of factors, such as 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 (DCO) is one aspect of programmatic advertising that creates each advertisement individually based on data available in real-time technology, meaning that an advertiser can send the right message at the right time to the right audience.

2023 Summer Travel Trends And Insights

According to a study by American Express, a staggering 85 percent of travellers plan to take two or more leisure trips in 2023. The top trends this summer are experiential and sustainable travel. Seventy-four percent 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. Eighty-one percent of travellers worldwide state that sustainable travel is important, with 69 percent planning to travel sustainably this summer and 64 percent willing to consider less popular destinations to reduce environmental impact.

These traveler 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 traveler 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 highestvalue audience segments and reach the right consumers with precision. For example, The Trade Desk sees over 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.

How Marriott achieved a nearly 300 percent uplift in bookings

Marriott 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 the demand for travel on the rise and the need to stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape, travel organisations 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.