On-Demand Webinar Quantcast Fireside Chat Series
Travel Industry Discussing Travel Trends and Advertising Strategies
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Quantcast Fireside Chat Series Travel Industry Discussing Travel Trends and Advertising Strategies
After two years of enduring the global pandemic, people value travel and personal time more than ever. As restrictions around the world start letting up, travel is about to experience a year unlike any before as people plan purpose-driven trips, prioritize vacation time, and up their investment in unique experiences.
We’ll discuss what trends we can expect to stay, how ongoing current events are impacting the travel industry, and how their advertising has been adapting to the new normal.
Speakers
Video Transcript
Zak Lyons
Attendees are starting to trickle in pretty good here. So I think we might as well go ahead and get started. So for all of you guys who are on the live chat here, welcome to the Quantcast Fireside Chat Series, Travel Industry: we’re going to be discussing the travel trends and advertising strategy, particularly how they’ve been affected over the last couple years, the current state of affairs, and the future state moving forward. A couple of housekeeping items today: this session is going to be recorded today and sent out afterwards; we are going to save 15 minutes if there is time for a Q&A here at the end. So as questions arise, as they come up, please feel free to use that Q&A feature within Zoom to ask them; we’ll try to get those questions addressed at the end. So for today’s agenda, we’re going to introduce myself as well as our panelists here, dive into a number of questions related to the travel industry, the pandemic advertising strategies, and then again, leave that Q&A for the end. So I did want to give a brief introduction of Quantcast and myself. First, Quantcast, we are a programmatic advertising company as well as an audience measurement, audience insights, and audience planning software company. So we help our clients–both publishers and marketers–best understand their audience and how to reach them at scale on the open internet across a variety of media formats. I myself have been working for the company for two and a half years now, in the sales department. I’ve had the pleasure to work with a number of travel clients, including Alex; we’ve known each other for about two out of those two and a half years. And so, without further ado, I did want to pass the baton and allow these participants to introduce themselves. So Alex, why don’t you kick us off?
Alex Velazquez
Absolutely. Thanks, Zach, for the handoff. My name is Alex Velasquez. I’m the National Director of Marketing at Westgate Resorts, been with them for a little over four and a half years. Very proud to be with this group. I’ve spent about 17, 18 years in the hotel marketing side of the industry supporting the direct channel for hotels, which in hotel speak means your website, right? And you know, Westgate’s a 40-year-old brand, fantastic brand to be aligned with, mainly the domestic US with 24 locations, including seven of those mega resorts located just on Walt Disney World Resort areas. We tend to specialize in sunny Orlando, so really stoked to be excited to talk about what all the possibilities are and brands alike.
Jordy Luft
Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Jordy Luft. I’m the Associate Media Director at PETER MAYER in New Orleans, Louisiana. We are a full-service advertising agency that has clients in a number of categories…
Zak Lyons
And Justin, from AAA.
Justin Hutchinson
Good morning, everybody. My name is Justin Hutchinson. I’m a digital marketing program manager for AAA; we’re located here in Southern California, in Costa Mesa. And for the past five years, I’ve been working with AAA leading innovative digital marketing initiatives for their automotive discounts and rewards and travel product lines. So yes, if you’re wondering, AAA does offer travel products; we’re not just a roadside and insurance company.
Zak Lyons
Very good. And I know, there was sort of a bit of a technical glitch there. Jordy, if you want to go ahead and finish what you were saying as well.
Jordy Luft
Yeah, here’s take two: PETER MAYER is a full service advertising agency located in New Orleans. We represent a number of different clients across the different categories that we tend to specialize in the travel category, destination and travel accounts. I’m happy to be here, and I’m looking forward to a very productive conversation today.
Zak Lyons
Great, and we’re lucky to have you. All you guys have a wealth of knowledge in the travel space, so I know you guys are going to be able to take these softballs I’m going to give you guys and really hit them out of the park. And so, without further ado, we would love to open up the floor to some discussions around advertising in the travel space. And we can kick it off with Justin from AAA. With COVID cases dropping, hopefully fingers crossed, what can we expect from the travel industry this year and moving forward?
Justin Hutchinson
Yeah, so I mean, navigating the pandemic was tough for AAA, and I think just a lot of uncertainty across the board in the industry, with so many travel restrictions and unpredictable surges and COVID cases. I mean, in the beginning for us, and I’m sure for many marketers in the industry, it was hard to say when and how much we would actually be investing in our marketing campaigns, because there was so much uncertainty and the demand was fluctuating. We had to work smarter; we had to rely on data to get in front of our members who were willing to travel. And now that things are more predictable and with fewer travel restrictions, we’re seeing that our members are looking forward to traveling and maybe actually willing to spend more on their trip, which is a good thing. So it’s starting to feel normal again because our partners are reaching out to us and wanting to get more exposure to members to capture the increase in demand. I think it’s just all things great for the industry. So for people joining us today, I don’t know about you; I don’t know about where you live, but here in the greater Los Angeles area, the highways are like parking lots again, the airport is a zoo, all things indicating that people are willing to travel again. So it appears that the world is slowly returning to some normalcy and the industry is rebounding. Now if we can only get some affordable gas and a cheap Happy Meal on the menu, that’d be great.
Zak Lyons
That’s a great take. And do you have anything to add to that, Jordy?
Jordy Luft
You know, I would agree with everything Justin says. We are seeing a tremendous pent-up demand for travel. Like he said, a lot of our travel accounts are a constriction of people willing to travel, willing to travel far over the past several years. But what we do with the agency is we monitor research; we have a very strong brand strategy department as well as a research department that compiles a lot of research to show travel intent, how people travel, willingness. We use this a lot to help craft our strategies, when we were experiencing the early stages of the pandemic to identify who would be the most likely people to travel and willing to travel. But now that we’re just coming out of it and the restrictions are lifting, we’re seeing a lot of positive energy toward travel. The latest stats that we saw, and we’ve been seeing here and sharing with our clients, is that right now almost 90% of people have current trip plans, and 72% of Americans are reporting that they are dreaming about or planning a trip in the past week. So we feel that the summer especially, which is a natural time for travel anyway, with schools closed and families willing to travel in groups and that, we see a lot of demand and pent-up demand, and people are going to be getting out there, hitting the roads, maybe using AAA products to plan those trips to hit the roads and get out there and see America, see the country again.
Zak Lyons
Awesome. And Alex, what have you seen on the hotel side?
Alex Velazquez
Yeah, listen, on the hotel side, I can’t do anything but agree with Justin and Jordy. I would say that, from the campaigning and marketing side, we have our classic six barriers to travel that you always have to overcome when you’re campaigning, right? And the number one barrier without getting to all six of them is time. It’s always time, you know, “I gotta get the time off; I gotta find the right time.” What’s interesting about the pandemic, to Jordy’s point, is what we saw was that all of a sudden people decided in their head, “I’m going to make time. I’m going to make time for this because time is precious. And I’m not going to put off my travel dreams anymore.” So while we see some volatility happening, and the prices of travel definitely are going up–we’re seeing some airline costs; we’re definitely seeing gas costs and things like that be very volatile from state to state–what we’re also seeing is that the families–and Westgate, one of our big why’s is that first resort for family fun, that first resort for a lot of in-staters to come and enjoy their time at our mega resorts that are very, very close to all the local attractions in Orlando or Branson or Gatlinburg–what we see is those families are no longer putting off those travel dreams. They’re saying, “Hey, we put this off long enough; let’s do what we’ve always dreamed of doing. Let’s not put it off, because life is too short.” The pandemic taught people that you got to savor those connections, those personal moments with your family. And you know, if it’s something that you really, really want to do, you’re gonna go ahead and commit to it and do it, whether you’re paying for it in cash or credit or whatever. So I think that’s the biggest takeaway of the pandemic. And the rest of it, like Justin said, is just know your market. Is it going to be local? Is it going to be a statewide or an in-state; is it going to be kind of a hybrid international thing, if you’re in a very specialized market, but that’s, I think, the big takeaway here.
Zak Lyons
I couldn’t agree more. And I mean, I’m certainly itching to travel myself for the last couple of years and have definitely been getting to scratch that itch just in the last couple months. So it’s glad to see that we are returning to some sense of normalcy in that travel space. And so, Jordy, question for you, as being on the agency side, you sort of have visibility into multiple clients in the travel space, maybe some focus on CBP. What do you guys, or what have you seen with those clients, or what are you as an agency really focusing on promoting, based on those changes in the travel behavior?
Jordy Luft
So as I said earlier, we really try to keep a pulse on what’s going on in consumers’ mindsets: what’s motivating them to travel? Where are they coming from? Why are they traveling? How has COVID or rising gas prices maybe impacted their decisions? So through our strategy department, through our research department, we’re constantly monitoring what is going on there: how is that impacting what we’re doing? Well, our messaging continues to be a messaging that showcases a diversity of attractions and attributes that each of our destination clients has to offer. We know that certain people still are feeling more comfortable, even though the restrictions are lifting, being in outdoor activities. So one of the clients that we represent–we have two clients that are beach destinations that have beaches and offerings or have a lot of outdoor activities that people can go and participate in–and so we continue to tout that to those people who don’t feel as comfortable being indoors yet, even though we’re seeing more and more people be comfortable there. We are also, to Alex’s point, recently, we continue to adjust our media plan to see where people are coming from. Certainly, after the pandemic, we were much more drive-market-focused, focusing on staycation or people who would want to maybe get out and experience something outdoors, but get back to their own bed that night. Now, we’re slowly expanding out our geographies for people who are more willing to get on a flight, now that flights, you don’t have to wear the mask on the flight anymore, and travel a little bit more than that. So it’s a combination of the markets that we’re targeting, the type of people now that are willing to travel before that was certain profiles of people, depending on the different destinations that we handle, that were willing to travel. Now, the profile is much bigger, so we can market to whole, a lot of different marketing segments and target audience segments.
Zak Lyons
So it’s a lot to keep in mind. And you certainly have your hands full, working on the agency side. But it’s great that you have so many perspectives and get to see so many views from so many different clients. But sounds like they are all facing sort of similar challenges and opportunities as well. And Alex or Justin, did you have anything to add about what specifically you’re focusing on promoting, based on the changes we’ve seen in the travel space last year or so?
Justin Hutchinson
So yeah, I can definitely relate to what Jordy is saying, just kind of having visibility across the board and many different types of products. You know, AAA Travel is in a unique position where we have relationships with various travel partners, which allows us to offer something for everyone. I mean, we have car rental, which has been really big in the last 10 to 12 months; we’ve seen a big rebound since kind of breaking outward of the pandemic, probably one of our most sought after products at this point in time. Of course, we offer hotel; we offer theme parks, which is also making a huge rebound at this point in time. I mean, people may not be able to hop on a plane and take that destination vacation, but chances are, you’re close to a theme park and you can still enjoy the outdoors. We do offer cruise, slowly coming back with still some uncertainty in that place. But one of the biggest things that we’re actually offering at this point in time is travel insurance. And in times of uncertainty, our members are looking for coverage. They want to travel, but they want to have that extra security and peace of mind. So kind of relating to what Jordy said already, we allow the data to tell us which products and services are in demand. And we’re constantly optimizing our campaigns and pushing budgets forward, based upon the demand in the marketplace. And of course, as always, we’re working with our agency partner, and Quantcast identifies areas where we can find members that are in market to book a trip, or go to a theme park, or just want to get out.
Alex Velazquez
Yeah, I mean, I couldn’t agree more with both sentiments, because, again, the volatility is there in certain markets. But you know, some of the ways we adapted to things during the pandemic–of course, there was a during the pandemic time, there was immediately after the pandemic pent-up time, and now there’s this kind of normalization that’s happening–but there’s still a lot of pent up, you know, a kind of like oscillating in there. And so even with prices getting a little bit higher, and things like that, I think that the smarter business entities took advantage of the pandemic to invest in themselves, whether it was renovating the resorts–we renovated; you know, we’re private; so, Mr. Siegel was able to renovate to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and take that downtime to renovate, make your product better. Not everybody is able to do that kind of thing. But you can always renovate your marketing. You know, one of the things Zak, you and I talk about, is: what are you doing to plan, when your marketing kind of goes down for a little while and you go into planning mode? Are you taking advantage of that time to renovate your marketing to get ready for what’s going to come? We took time to do that at Westgate, even for the time that we had in the pandemic, and then coming out of the pandemic, we were kind of ready in a lot of ways to launch marketing that took advantage of new pent-up demand. But even if you’re late to that game a little bit, you got to think about things a little bit more in the context of: what are the things that people now care about? Let’s put cost off to the side for a second. Let’s just say if all things are equal, if all the money’s equal, what are the things that people are looking for? You know, Jordy mentioned beach resorts: we have three of those as well. It’s incredible: people are looking for less crowds; they’re looking for kind of a ‘life is short’ mentality and experiential type thing–so really illustrating to them what the experiences are around your destination; they’re concerned about their PTO. Let’s talk about PTO for a second. How are you appealing to people that are concerned about losing PTO, because you have a lot of people that worked through the pandemic, and some of them are experiencing, like, “I gotta use my PTO or lose it.” And companies are kind of pushing people: “Hey, use your PTO.” So how are you appealing to people that have the time and they are almost sitting there saying: “I want to go use this; I need to take these micro-breaks; I need to take these micro-getaways. So what is your marketing going to do to appeal to them? And then children and families being cooped up, I mean, that’s a given, that has been part of the pent-up demand for over a year and a half now. And that part of the demand psychologically is still as strong as ever, I can assure you: we see it in the comments; we see it in the feedback; we see it in the surveys; it is as strong as ever. And so if you’re not addressing that with some of your messaging, you’re really missing out on a little bit of that, if part of your business is skewed towards families. So I think all the above–Justin and Jordy hit it on the head better than I can. But you know, that’s all got to be part of the mix now.
Zak Lyons
Awesome. And so that really gives us a good segue into the next question here, particularly just looking at trends we’ve seen over the last couple years. And so some of the ones that Alex just addressed, you know, the PTO issue, people who are more focused on local and regional travel, people more focused on outdoor adventures, camping, more hospitable environment or safer environments, more family-oriented travel, I guess. Justin, Jordy, if you guys want to take this one: what trends are you guys really seeing that you’re aligning your advertising to? I’ll let Justin take the first crack.
Justin Hutchinson
I can jump in here. I mean, there’s two things I definitely wanted to talk about in here. And it’s more about the type of person that we’re going after. And during the pandemic, you know, we spent a lot of time in the house, we spent a lot of time social distancing. I think one of the biggest things that we noticed is that people became, you know, we want to target the mobile-first user, right? So with social distancing, and just touch lists in a society and things like that, people started to use their phones more frequently. So at a restaurant, you might place an order online or scan a QR code, looking for a menu. Or use your phone to check in somewhere, or you’re using social media to connect with family and friends, or you’re on a zoom call like we are right now to connect with family and friends, whether it be on your phone or on your computer. So for various reasons, people were using their phones more, because everything was touchless. And we want it to be in front of them in those moments. So we beefed up our social media span. And we took advantage of display campaigns, so that we connect with people in all these places and connect with our members. It gives us an opportunity to showcase beautiful destinations, inspire people to travel, even though there’s no uncertain times. A second thing I wanted to touch on was a Netflix-and-chill type person. So we all spent a lot of time in the house; we were searching a lot of the streaming platforms for new content, or maybe it’s old content that you’re revisiting from maybe 10, 15 years ago, something nostalgic. Either way, I think there was a lot of screen time going on. So we aligned a new strategy. And AAA is very conservative in terms of marketing, because we’re very direct response; we’re looking for return on investment as soon as possible. But we actually did invest in a travel campaign for CTV so we can reach members that are obviously spending a lot more time in front of their TV and picking up on streaming television.
I mean, I’ll jump in on the–oh, Jordy and I both jump in at the same time. I’ll just take 20 seconds. I will say that you’ve got to really assess all the marketing weapons at your disposal, and you got to pick the right mix for the right particular product; it’s going to be different for everybody. But I will double down on what Jordy said about the full-funnel approach. Hotels are very direct response, and we always will be, but if you’re not building towards a more full-funnel assessment of what your marketing does, listen, you’re missing out. And listen, if you haven’t at least tried to assess your total costs on your direct channel, you need to start doing that. One of the things we found out, Zach, with Facebook–but I’ll just use Facebook as an example. They had a privacy issue, obviously, a year and a half ago with iOS 14, and now you can’t even get that 30-day attribution on it anymore. But are you going to abandon social media advertising because of that? The reality is at Westgate, we get millions of dollars in revenue for people that are on iOS devices, so you can’t just throw that out. You can’t just be like, “Oh well, we can’t track everything perfectly. We’re going to throw that out.” But where does that leave you? Like Jordy said, it leads you into needing to be more full funnel in your approach in a lot of things to be able to adjudicate what types of display advertising, what types of experiential video advertising, and things like that, fed your entire funnel. So this is speaking directly to hoteliers that have been solely direct response for so many years: you got to start pushing that envelope a little bit; you got to nudge that down the line, because if that’s your one-stop shop, the next pandemic that comes along, or the next thing that affects volatility with the OTAs, or God forbid, the OTAs put you into a bad sort order, and all of a sudden, your business starts declining… you can’t just have all your eggs in that basket. Like I said before, you gotta have more to your mix of that. Go ahead, Jordy.
Great, yeah, and thanks for the shout out. Quantcast certainly does have products to help you know and grow your audience as well as we are a leader in this cookieless space, as Chrome potentially is depreciating cookies in 2023. We’re gonna be ahead of the game. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with me and we can talk about our cookieless solutions as well as our audience planning and measurement solutions to help you know and grow your audience. And so with that, we’re gonna thank the audience all for joining today. I really want to– huge thanks to all of our panelists who joined: Jordy, Justin, Alex–you guys are great. I certainly feel more educated about the travel space. Your wealth of knowledge has been a boon to us all. And so without further ado, that’ll be the end of it. I’m going to leave up this ‘thank you’ screen here. If you do want to get in contact with me, then we can also follow up with Q and A’s, if you have any burning questions that you weren’t able to ask in the chat today, we can follow up via email to get those all answered. Again, thank you again, panelists and audience for joining. Hope you really enjoyed the session today.