‘It is not a debate about print or digital’: Travel marketers should be using both
Travellers are spending less time planning their trips, giving marketers more opportunities to reach their audience once they arrive at their destination on a variety different platforms, a panel of marketers have said at Mumbrella’s Travel Marketing Summit.
Libby Hodgson, director for marketing, commercial and fundraising at Taronga Conversation Society Australia, said marketers and brands should be harnessing the use of partnerships, digital and print to target travellers and it is “not a debate about print or digital”.
The speakers on the ‘Marketing on the Move: Following the Traveller on Their Journey’ panel
Hodgson outlined how travellers of today have changed their levels of comfort and confidence, and they are now planning their holidays less – leaving the door open for brands and marketers to use multiple platforms to present experiences, products and ideas.
“Digital, print, partnerships, they’re just the ways of accessing people and as that market of unplanned people grows, the opportunity and justification to spend more budget doing greater things across those channels is there to use.”
Kate Flynn, marketing and communications manager at Destination Melbourne, said for her brand “print is well and truly alive”, and as a way of marketing it is definitely “still alive and kicking”.
Flynn said if it is presented in the right way, such as creating guides or travel itineraries, print can help people digest content which would otherwise be overwhelming.
“If you create quality content, then you get it in the right places… people will use it.
“People do get overwhelmed and these guides create suggested content and it’s not just ‘Go, here and do this’. If you create the content in the form of an itinerary for the day and make a destination more digestible for people, then they will respond to that,” Flynn added.
However, Andres Lopez-Varela, producer and co-host at The Destinationists, said digital gives marketers and brands an “inspirational element” and print is a precursor to a “deeper, richer digital experience”.
“Connecting the dots and actually enabling people to actually experience the destination experience is really valuable, the presence of those kinds of guides and those physical things can act as a very good precursor and pointer to richer, deeper digital guides and richer, deeper digital content that allows you to actually get under the skin and be that intrepid traveller in a particular destination,” Lopez-Varela said to the audience.
Hodgson said being across everything as a travel marketer and brand is one of the biggest challenges, so it is about knowing the best opportunities for your particular brand.
“It is knowing the greatest areas of opportunity and the bits you can really have impact and grow market rather than trying to be in every channel, for every country, for every customer because you just can’t be,” she said.
Abigail Dawson was Mumbrella's senior content journalist covering event content. She left Mumbrella to move into an agency role in 2020.
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By ‘planning their holiday less’ what they really mean is that people aren’t interested in being force fed ‘content’.
‘Richer, deeper digital guides’ are as ignored as old-fashioned brochures. Just much more expensive.
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