The forgotten art of travel marketing: Why video is the most powerful tool in your arsenal

Travel purchases are largely emotional decisions and nothing can convey (and evoke) emotion quite like video, taking a would-be consumer right to the destination themselves. The right video marketing campaign can help brands tell stories which resonate, build trust, create a sense of longing, and ultimately, steal market share. We’ve compiled a few best practice tips based on our own research and expertise here at 90 Seconds to help you create video campaigns that ensure you remain ahead of competitors. 

 

Rise of virtual reality

 

With so many of us staying largely cooped up indoors since March 2020, it is no surprise that we’ve seen an evolution of 360-degree videos and panorama that provide a virtual reality experience. While VR is nothing new — newspapers like The Financial Times have been using 360-degree videos to profile cities as far back as 2016 — hotels are increasingly using VR tours to showcase their hotel rooms, while travel agents are doing the same depicting tourist attractions.

 

Last year in the UK, 90 Seconds saw walkthrough videos — used to provide viewers with every detail and give as close to an ‘IRL’ experience as possible — quadruple in demand.

 

And it makes sense. Travel purchases are largely made based on emotions, and the purpose of these types of videos is to stoke the desire for sensory experiences — which they do very well.

 

What’s more, virtual reality is incredibly engaging. Featuring this form of video content on your website directly increases the time visitors spend on it, allowing you maximum opportunity to engage traffic and influence buying decisions. They’re also incredibly shareable, resulting in increased audience reach.

 

This is the future of travel marketing. Take this cinematic, beautiful movie titled Wild Tasmania, which uses 4K footage to evoke the wanderlust in us all.

 

Social is king

 

You don’t have to be a marketer to understand the pull of holiday envy. Brands must leverage this by creating shareable video content, using social channels to drive their efforts. Be sure to embrace new platforms and consider how they may complement the tried and trusted. Take TikTok, for example. With an average session length of 10.85 minutes — more than twice the level received by Pinterest, which ranks second at 5.06 minutes — and a reputation for “discoverability” marketers have a unique opportunity to reach a colossal, captive audience through travel-related content on TikTok. The world may be opening up gradually, but our mobile phones are always open, and with over two billion downloads and one billion monthly users, TikTok users are hungry for new content — harness this!

 

In comparison, TripAdvisor, which continues to rank as number one in the Travel and Tourism category in the US, has 490 million active monthly users — which is less than TikTok’s daily visitors. And while it is by no means obsolete, TripAdvisor’s practical function as a review and booking platform can be used more effectively to serve mid- to low-funnel objectives, while image-based platforms like TikTok should be embraced as the next destinations for travel-related video marketing content. Just don’t forget to tag your location, as geo-location is an influencing factor in TikTok’s algorithm, ensuring your content will end up in the relevant searches. 

This social media ad created by 90 Seconds for Songkran festival is visceral, simple, and effective, drawing the viewer in as if they were there themselves and delivering that authenticity that does so well on social media. 

 

Harness the power of the influencer

 

Today’s consumer conducts research before making a purchasing decision — and the higher the emotional investment, the greater the level of review. We rank our Foodpanda options by rating, we check out Rotten Tomatoes when trying to decide what movie to watch — and when booking a holiday…? Multiply that research commitment exponentially. To get maximum cut-through, consider engaging micro-influencers in your content creation to help forge a connection with your consumer and create a sense of trust through social proof. 

 

Trust from unbiased sources is naturally cultivated. It’s authentic, genuine, and we all instinctively relate to it; however, that’s especially true for millennials, who trust user generated content (UGC) two times more than content from brands. What’s more, customers who end up on an e-commerce site through a UGC video are 184% times more likely to purchase — and when they do, they’ll spend approximately 45% more.