A free video and some strategic marketing insights from the keynote panel on Day 2 of EyeforTravel’s recent European Summit

With proven marketing channels and rapid adoption of new technologies, this is an incredible time for the travel industry, Hugo Burge, chief executive of Momondo Group told a packed conference room in London last month. Burge along with senior execs from Airbnb, Lastminute.com, Trivago and Secret Escapes was speaking about the growth drivers of travel intermediaries today.

One of the core themes from the session was how marketing is more measurable than ever. Today 10 million people opt in to receive Cheapflights.co.uk’s digital newsletters, a figure that is growing year-on-year and is proving to be one of the fastest growing areas of its business. 

“Performance-based advertising is now available in newsletters, and we see this as an exciting and vibrant area,” says Burge. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 70% of these newsletters today are opened on a mobile phone.

On a similar page was Alex Saint, CEO,Secret Escapes who said the firm’s ‘travel porn’ emails are so popular with its 25 million users that the team regularly receives complaints when they end up in spam!

“Users hate getting crap email but they will open those that are fun, engaging and with great content,” says Saint.

The Secret Escapes team takes an aggressive approach using a combination of digital and TV advertising, and sticking firmly to their brand promise in order to create trust.

TV marketing has proved to be as successful for Secret Escapes as digital; it has found a method of measuring which TV spots work, how many sign ups it delivers and where to optimise.

“We can very carefully choose a TV schedule to give us same level of efficiency of digital marketing,” he says.

In the UK, one of its biggest markets, the halo affect of TV has led to 65% brand awareness in just five years.

Trivago, which last year spent  €400 million on marketing with a significant percentage directed towards brand marketing, is also big fan of TV campaigns. Having built a case for TV campaigns in Europe, Trivago has now taken those to 55 other markets and the result, says MD JohannesThomas, is that six out of 10 people know the brand. Campaigns are analysed on a spot basis so it can quickly be established where money is being well spent.

TV has proved more of a challenge for Lastminute.com, which spends 70 to 80% of its marketing budget online.  “In our experience using TV in an efficient way is one of the biggest challenges,” says Andrea Bertoli, Deputy CEO,Lastminute.com, who agrees that it’s crucial to find a way to measure TV investment, which is harder to adjust on the fly.

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