Five travel marketing trends agents can act on right now in time for 2025

In today's competitive travel landscape, investing in your brand is paramount. It's no longer enough to simply book a holiday; today's travellers crave curated experiences that resonate on a deeper level. By cultivating a strong brand identity, travel businesses can differentiate themselves from their competition, establish a distinct voice, and ultimately deliver enhanced customer value.

This means crafting a compelling brand narrative that speaks to the desires and aspirations of your customers, current and future, creating consistent messaging across all touchpoints, and fostering a sense of community and belonging.

By focusing on the experiential aspect of travel, brands can transform ordinary trips into extraordinary memories, creating lasting value and forging deeper connections with their customers. After all, for many, a holiday is more than just a break from routine; it's an opportunity for personal growth, adventure, and creating cherished memories that last a lifetime.

Andrew Shelton, the brand and campaigns Llama.

With social media platforms demanding ever higher posting frequency, travel marketers will be increasingly reliant on generative AI to help them create and edit content at scale.

Writing captions and advertising copy that can be translated into multiple languages almost instantly will become even more commonplace, and agents can expect an ever-wider choice of tools to assist them in creating content, storyboards, images and short videos that will reduce the burden of being on the lookout for trending content 24/7.

However, authenticity is key. Agents can use AI to inspire, but must also give customers realistic expectations of what their dream destination actually looks like. AI-generated content will only grow in 2025, but it still needs human touch before being posted.

Marta Safin, the social media Llama.

In 2025, agents marketing more premium travel businesses, or those targeting a more affluent consumer, should consider how to respond to the redefinition of luxury through the lens of experiences.

Mintel’s 2023 Now, Next and Future report showed 81% of luxury holidaymakers want to include as many experiences as possible, from wellbeing to food and drink, immersion in local culture, or indulging in an activity. Agents and travel marketers should be considering how to integrate and amplify their ability to meet that need in their promotional activity.

A good agent will keep a database of their core target customers and growth segments. But layering on a deeper appreciation of their customers’ needs, behaviours, hobbies and passion points can add a level of personalisation and relevance that can take a CRM strategy up a notch.

Moving this into your communications strategy means less focus on tactical messages and discounting in your email and direct mail communications, and prioritising inspiration, authentic content and real-life experiences.

As 2025 looms, a great place for agents to start is aligning their CRM and content plans around the key luxury pillars of activity and adventure, authentic local experiences and consumer passion points.

Lisa Edwards-Webb, the customer Llama.

The fragmentation and redefinition of the traditional media eco-system, its merging into the owned channel world of SEO, content and social media, and the continued contraction of print media and the visibility of travel within that space, will only continue in 2025 and agents with PR responsibilities will need to expand their skillsets accordingly.

The potential of authentic earned storytelling to inspire and influence customers, and protect a brand’s reputation, won’t change – but the means by which those stories are told will, requiring increased collaboration across earned and owned channels to optimise return on investment.

And, as with the other marketing channels, while AI will continue to grow as a factor in PR, agents should be cautioned against trading speed and convenience for quality. Google can sniff out an AI-generated press release a mile away, and will penalise your brand accordingly.

The strategic message for travel marketers of all stripes in 2025 is to keep it real, despite the temptations of technology. Brand and customer loyalty are rooted in trust, which in turn is grounded in honesty. The human and the artificial can successfully and effectively complement each other when the customer is kept front of mind – and, as in any year, that should always be the starting point for any 2025 marketing strategy. 

Phil Bloomfield, the communications and PR Llama.

TTG has teamed up with travel marketing collective We Are Llama to tap the team's industry knowledge and experience to offer agents insights, tips and guidance on how they can make the most of the marketing resources at their disposal – and sharpen their focus. Here's some of their key tips from the past few years.

• Will Threads pull everything together? Or unravel your social media strategy? [July 2023]
  
  
• Why it's time to spring clean your marketing... in August [August 2023]
  
  
• Why 'uncool' email still has a vital place in agents' marketing arsenal [October 2023]
  
  
• Agents swayed by AI must remember to keep a firm hand on the wheel [November 2023]
  
  
• Forget 'make do and mend' travel marketing and build your brand to last [December 2023]
  
  
• How can agents plan ahead to ride out the next inevitable crisis? [March 2024]
  
  
• Agents have to work harder to show Google their content is truly valuable – here's how [April 2024]
  
  
• TikTok: Seven tips to get the most out of the platform agents can no longer afford to ignore [August 2024]
  
  
• 10 ways agents can – and should – prepare now to make the most of peaks [October 2024]