Travel brands will increase their digital ad spend from 63% of their budgets, in 2020, to 70%, in 2023

Travel industry advertising is poised for rapid growth as brands reestablish relationships with consumers after the big break in 2020, according to Georgia Email List Zenith’s Business Intelligence – Travel report, released today. Zenith expects travel advertising in the 13 key markets * to grow by around 24% in 2021, twice as fast as the advertising market as a whole, before growing by 36% in 2022 and 19% in 2023.

As international travel begins to recover, travel brands must rebuild their relationships with consumers, adjusting to the reality of post-COVID travel. Brands will have to redirect their communications to different audiences while adapting to the decline in business travel (as companies manage their international business with remote meetings), address consumer concerns about travel sustainability, and meet the growing demand for low-carbon travel.

Travel advertising was one of the categories most affected by COVID-19. The travel advertising market lost almost half of its value in 2020 (46%), while the advertising market as a whole declined by only 4%. Zenith estimates that travel ad spend fell from $ 18 billion in 2019 to $ 9.7 billion in 2020.

The pent-up travel demand will drive rapid growth in travel ad spend in the coming years, but it will be a long way to regain pre-pandemic investment levels. Travel ad spend this year will still be 33% below its 2019 level, while the ad market as a whole will be 7% above. We will have to wait until 2023 for the travel sector to exceed the investment levels of 2019, when it will reach 19.6 billion dollars