“Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.”
– Anthony Bourdain
In the world of travel and tourism, effective content marketing can be the key to capturing the attention of wanderlust-driven audiences. From strong travel SEO strategies to developing messaging that inspires consumers to plan their next trip, a lot goes into a successful travel content marketing campaign.
The good news is if you’re looking for ways to take your travel content marketing to the next level, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you operate a boutique travel business, promote a national tourism board or run a destination‐focused marketing agency, mastering content marketing travel best practices enables you to surface in the search engine results pages (SERPs) right when potential travelers are dreaming, researching and booking.
By weaving together user generated content, short videos packed with travel tips and visually appealing social media content, you can transform casual browsers into loyal brand advocates.
What Goes Into Content Marketing for the Travel Industry?
Business-to-consumer (B2C) travel marketing is a branch of lifestyle content, and producing lifestyle content requires a few important elements:
Audience Segmentation
No traveler is the same, and not everyone dreams of the same travel experience. While one person’s ideal vacay might be a week at a tropical resort, another might crave an off-the-grid mountain escape. By understanding and identifying your different audiences and segmenting them into categories, you can create travel marketing campaigns that speak to each group’s interests.
Examples of segmentation categories include:
- Adventure travelers.
- Luxury travelers.
- Budget travelers.
- Family-friendly travelers.
- Solo travelers.
- Digital nomads.
Once your consumer audience has been properly segmented, you can create valuable content that meets the needs of each group, enabling you to develop a more engaging successful marketing campaign. The more precise your content strategy, the more likely your travel marketing efforts will resonate with each target audience and convert them into bookings.
Subscribe to
The Content Marketer
Get weekly insights, advice and opinions about all things digital marketing.
Thanks for subscribing! Keep an eye out for a Welcome email from us shortly. If you don’t see it come through, check your spam folder and mark the email as “not spam.”
Storytelling
Effective storytelling is a key component of travel content marketing. Rather than telling consumers what they might experience, try sharing authentic and engaging stories instead. Doing so can enable you to cultivate a strong emotional connection with your target audience that inspires them to book a trip.
Layering in compelling video content, immersive short video reels and first-person blog post narratives will enrich your story and support an omnichannel content creation plan that drives engagement across social media platforms.
Keyword Research
There’s a lot of content out there, especially travel-related content. With so much competition, it’s easy for your content to get overlooked. That’s where a strong SEO strategy comes in. Diligent keyword research can help you identify which travel terms your target audience is searching for online.
Once you have a good idea of these keywords, you can integrate them into your content strategy to help you rank higher on SERPs and drive traffic to your content. Remember: Pairing the right long-tail travel keywords with high-quality content creation gives search engines clear signals that your page satisfies user intent.
Awareness of Current Travel Trends
The travel industry is frequently changing, so travel content marketers need to be up-to-date on the latest trends. Current trends include solo travel — with 76% of Millennials and Gen-Z planning a solo trip in 2024 — often supported by a digital nomad visa that enables remote work from various destinations, and sustainable travel, which involves minimizing one’s environmental impact while exploring the world.
By keeping up with current trends, you can incorporate them into your travel marketing strategy. Examples include developing destination guides specifically for solo travelers or gifting customers with reusable straws they can take on their vacation.
For travelers seeking unbeatable safari experiences, understanding the best time to embark on such adventures is crucial. This approach can help deliver more engaging travel content by aligning the journey with optimal times based on weather and environmental factors.
Consider creating content that delves into specifics such as when to visit Tanzania for a safari, furnishing your audience with insights that heighten their travel planning experience. Supplement these assets with tourism short videos that outline the seasonal highlights to further nurture potential travelers.
Influencer Partnerships
A travel influencer may create reviews, travel vlogs and guides for their large audiences — all of which can have a massive impact on where people book their next vacation. Collaborating with travel influencers can help you boost your brand’s reach and get your travel content seen by new audiences.
When you combine influencer storytelling with strategic social media marketing tactics and user generated content reposts, you generate authentic social proof that modern travelers trust.
What Makes Travel Marketing Content Unique?
Travel content should evoke emotions and create a sense of adventure and wanderlust among an audience — making it different from other forms of marketing.
When it comes to travel marketing, you’re selling an experience, not a product. Therefore, the most effective travel marketing strategies aren’t overly pushy. Rather, they focus on inspiring adventure and matching an experience with a consumer’s interests.
A few factors that make travel content marketing unique include:
- Emotional Appeal: Whether it’s nostalgia, curiosity or excitement, travel marketing content should appeal to an audience’s emotions. You can evoke emotional responses by incorporating high-quality and engaging content into your campaigns, such as personal travel stories or videos of thrilling experiences.
- Visuals: Visual content captures the characteristics that make a destination unique, making it an essential element of any effective content marketing strategy for the travel industry. From drone footage of endless coastlines to panoramic photographs of high mountain peaks, visual content can quickly grab your audience’s attention and inspire them to book a trip.
- Keyword Usage: Travel content requires leveraging specific keywords that boost SEO. This may include keywords about certain locations or activities (such as, “What to do in Japan with kids”), transportation-focused keywords (such as, “How do you get around Bermuda without a car?”) and keywords that are specific to the type of accommodation someone may be interested in (such as “dog-friendly hotels near Lake Tahoe”). Learn more about what it takes to boost the SEO of your travel website here.
- Inspirational messaging: When it comes to travel content marketing, storytelling with an intent to inspire is the name of the game — and your messaging should reflect that. By encouraging consumers to explore a new place, step out of their comfort zone and try an activity they’ve never done before, you can inspire adventure and motivate consumers to plan their next trip.
- Cross-channel consistency: Aligning blog posts, email marketing, social media posts and short videos around a unified theme ensures that your marketing efforts reinforce one another and guide prospects down the funnel.
What Types of Content Work Well for Travel Companies?
Content marketing for travel businesses can take several forms:
Visual Content
High-quality videos and photos capture the beauty of a destination and provide a glimpse at what a “day in the life” is like — leaving a lasting impression on travelers. Photos and videos can help your target audience envision themselves in these settings, making your travel marketing campaigns even more powerful.
Blogs Posts
A travel blog is the perfect medium for providing in-depth details about a specific destination. Usually informative, blog posts can include business travel tips, guides for a specific destination, itinerary suggestions or personal travel stories. Just don’t forget to optimize your content by incorporating the right keywords and other appropriate SEO tactics into your blog post so it can rank high on a SERP.
Social Media
Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Pinterest are ideal for sharing photos, videos and general overviews of what to expect when visiting a travel destination. Whether it’s sharing photos of local cuisine or filming a TikTok about a great hike in the area, there’s no shortage of travel content ideas for social media.
A strategic mix of generated content and curated user generated content can help travel brands maintain authenticity and keep their social feeds lively.
Emails
Not every traveler will be able to drop everything and book an immediate vacation — despite how tempting it might be. That’s why continuously producing high-quality content that engages potential consumers is key.
A great way to nurture prospects is through email marketing campaigns and travel newsletters. Your emails could contain testimonials or stories from travelers, highlight upcoming events in the area, inform travelers about deals or display featured social media posts.
The goal is to keep your target audience engaged so that when they are ready to book their next trip, your brand or destination is top-of-mind. Personalized email content coupled with dynamic imagery can drive repeat visits and bolster customer loyalty.
User-Generated Content
Authenticity is essential in travel marketing, and personal recommendations from real people can go a long way. From reviews to video recaps, user-generated content can help a travel brand build a strong, trustworthy relationship with its target audience.
Encourage guests to share their experiences and tag your brand or location. Featuring their media posts not only validates their journey but also furnishes you with a steady pipeline of fresh, engaging content travel assets.
Infographics
Infographics can make complicated travel topics — such as packing lists, cultural do’s and don’ts and travel itineraries — easier to understand and share with others. When designed thoughtfully, infographics can become link-worthy resources that elevate your domain authority and contribute to a holistic content marketing strategy.
What Are Some Travel Marketing Content Examples?
From local tourism associations to hotel and hospitality marketers, travel organizations that leverage the power of SEO and high-quality, educational content have been able to dominate the travel industry.
Popular Destinations Landing Page by AAA Travel
AAA might be known as the company that will save you if you get stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, but AAA Travel is the company’s travel-focused arm that specializes in helping people plan the perfect getaway.
To keep its spot as one of the nation’s leading travel companies, AAA developed an educational landing page devoted to popular vacation destinations. In doing so, AAA can capitalize on trending SEO keywords — such as “things to do in Nashville” and “where to stay in Honolulu” — while providing consumers with everything they need to plan a trip to one of these leading destinations.
Traveler Stories by TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor has an entire blog focused on travel stories that provide first-hand advice to readers. The blog is split into categories, and the stories include tips for LGBTQ travel, the best dishes to try while in Paris and comparisons of popular destinations (such as Santorini vs. Mykonos).
The content aligns with what travelers want to learn, and each article provides helpful answers to questions their audience may have. By providing such relevant, specific and informational content, TripAdvisor can maintain its position as the world’s leading travel guidance platform.
Lonely Planet’s Immersive Videos
Visual content plays a critical role in any travel content marketing strategy, and Lonely Planet is a travel company that does an excellent job of incorporating immersive videos into their campaigns. The videos are created on-location and feature footage of picturesque scenery and the real people who live in these destinations — giving their audience a glimpse at what they can expect should they plan a visit.
From Mongolia to Montana, Lonely Planet’s videos cover important information that their target audience will find valuable, and the videos are designed to motivate their audience to book their next adventure.
The Croatian National Tourist Board’s Winter Wonderland UGC Campaign
To boost tourism during the colder months of the year, the Croatian National Tourist Board launched, “Croatia – Winter Wonderland.” The board encouraged people traveling to Croatia in the winter to post their photos on social media platforms like TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, and tag every photo with the campaign’s hashtags, #CroatiaWinterWonderland and #MagicalCroatia.
The board also integrated giveaways into the campaign and collaborated with social media influencers to provide them with trips to Croatia hot spots, like Plitvice Lakes National Park and Dubrovnik.
Ready To Get Started on Travel Content Marketing?
There’s no time like the present to revamp your approach to travel content marketing. By segmenting your audience, telling impactful travel stories and developing a solid SEO approach, you can engage consumers and take your marketing efforts — and ROI — to the next level.
Partner with a seasoned content marketing agency like Brafton that specialises in the marketing travel industry to streamline your campaign creation, amplify your social media marketing results and deliver high-quality assets that delight travelers and drive revenue.