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Travel advertising booming after pandemic

Travel advertising taking off after pandemic

Travel advertising will grow two to six times faster than admarket as a whole in 13 key markets from 2021 to 2023 but still, the travel ad market will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023, according to advertising company Zenith´s forecast.

Travel advertising in 13 key markets will expand by 24% in 2021, twice as fast as the advertising market as a whole, before 36% growth in 2022 and 19% growth in 2023, the forecast says.

”As global travel starts to recover, travel brands must rebuild their relationships with consumers as they adapt to the realities of post-COVID travel. Brands will have to refocus their communications on different audiences as they adapt to the decline of business travel as companies coordinate more international business with remote meetings, and address consumers’ concerns about the sustainability of travel, and adapt to growing demand for low-carbon journeys.”

PANDEMIC EFFECT

Zenith says that travel ads was one of the categories hardest-hit by the pandemic. The travel ad market lost 46% of it value in 2020 while the ad market as a whole shrank by just 4%. Zenith estimates that travel adspend fell from USD18.0 billion in 2019 to USD 9.7 billion in 2020.

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”Pent-up demand for travel will drive rapid growth in travel adspend over the next few years, but it will be a long road back to pre-pandemic spending. Travel adspend will be still 33% below its 2019 level this year, while the ad market as a whole will be 7% ahead. It will take until 2023 for travel to exceed 2019 levels of spending, when it will reach USD 19.6billion.”

DIGITAL PRIORITY

Zenith says that travel advertisers spend more on digital advertising than the average brand – 63% in 2020, compared to 58% on average.

”This is not surprising for a category that has been well ahead of the market in digital transformation, conducting 32% of sales by ecommerce in 2021 compared to 20% for retail as a whole.”

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Zenith forecasts digital adspend by travel brands to grow by 6% a year between 2019 and 2023. By 2023 travel brands will be spending 70% of their budgets on digital advertising, an increase from 63% in 2020.

INDIA AND RUSSIA

Zenith expects the fastest growth in travel advertising to come from India and Russia, where travel adspend will be 31% and 21% respectively above the 2019 baseline by 2023.

“Here, rising disposable incomes mean more people are travelling, and existing travellers are travelling more frequently. The same holds true for China and Poland, where adspend will increase by 16% and 14% respectively between 2019 and 2023.”

The 13 markets included in this report are Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, UK and USA, which between them account for 74% of total global adspend.

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