For nearly a decade, our mission has been to help cities, states, regions and countries reinvigorate tourism following times of adversity. One way we are helping to support our advertising partners is through our COVID-19 resource center. The other is through our COVID-19 webinar series with the latest travel industry data, insights and expert perspectives to help advertisers navigate these challenging times, which everyone is welcome to join.
How the Travel Industry is Preparing for Recovery
Building upon the first three in the series, which focused on how destinations and tourism organizations are navigating the crisis as well as the latest advertising industry and traveler insights, we recently held our fourth session, “How The Travel Industry is Preparing for Recovery.”
For this session, we tapped industry leaders Craig Compagnone, Chief Operating Officer, MMGY Global along with our own Doug Park, Senior Director of Ad Operations and Wendy Olson Killion, Vice President of Business Development at Expedia Group Media Solutions.
As the travel industry looks toward recovery, our speakers discussed ways travel marketers can adjust to the new set of challenges and opportunities that we are all facing. Ultimately, our speakers concluded that success comes down to working closely and collaboratively with partners in the industry. Craig shared the latest MMGY studies on United States-focused traveler sentiment; Wendy and Doug discussed how to leverage these insights to engage travelers.
If you missed the live webinar, you are welcome to watch it on-demand to learn:
How US consumers are considering traveling again, according to MMGY’s studies
How to create impactful ad creative tailored to what resonates with consumers today
Which data points can help you plan for and measure your recovery efforts
How you can leverage partners to aid in your recovery
Green Shoots of Travel + Global Recovery Program
Craig shared MMGY’s sentiment studies which indicate that American travelers are increasingly looking to travel, especially domestically by car.
We are seeing the same patterns in our global Expedia Group data as well: As Wendy shared, that initial green shoots have been emerging over the past few weeks as travel searches are increasing in areas around the world.These statistics point to more and more emerging opportunities for advertisers to connect with travelers as they start to at least dream, consider, and even book their next trip.
Doug shared how the right messages, creative and policies are key to that connection: Travelers today are looking for reassurances with hygiene, cleanliness, safety, flexibility, value and deals. Understanding those traveler needs and adjusting creative guidelines, as well as testing and learning as the landscape continues to shift, can help drive positive results whether your goal is awareness, engagement or conversion.
Wendy also spoke about Expedia Group’s newly released recovery program. This global initiative provides a $275 million to a Global Recovery Program that will help the travel industry, supply partners, and destinations rebound from the COVID-19 crisis.
As part of these efforts to help re-ignite travel demand to destinations, we are making $25 million of advertising relief available, which includes products, programs and media value add from Expedia Group brands for our partners. The global program focuses on standalone and co-op campaigns to revive destinations running before the end of January 2021. Destinations and tourism organizations, as well as lodging, transportation, activities partners and other advertisers looking to promote a destination can be eligible for the program by signing up by September 1, 2020. To learn more, connect with your Media Solutions representative or visit our site here.
If you would like to learn more about our webinar series and view any of the on-demand sessions to join critical conversations on travel advertiser response and recovery to the COVID-19 crisis, you can access the schedule and register here.
