It is no news to the travel-pro realm that dollars must work smarter. Travel industry marketers, destination marketing organizations (DMOs), and hotel brands are increasingly turning to hyper-directed digital media campaigns. These ultra-targeted media and content served to the right person at the right time aim at travelers who have shown search interest in the advertised destination/product, but also those who have high chances of being attracted enough to convert.
Rich behavioral data (often pooled from data consortiums of travel companies) is used to identify audiences with proven or emerging travel intent, and deliver tailored messages that resonate. The result is more efficient marketing that puts travel products in front of consumers already inclined to travel, leading to higher engagement, conversion, and return on ad spend. Recent trends from 2023–2025 show that data-driven precision targeting is becoming essential within effective travel marketing efforts.
Targeting Travelers with Proven and Emerging Intent
As mentioned, hyper-directed campaigns can focus on audiences signaling travel intent. Proven intent audiences include consumers who have made travel-related searches or bookings (for example, someone who booked a flight and likely needs a hotel), while emerging intent might be inferred from behavior like clicking on articles with travel recommendations, watching or searching for videos or lookalike destinations. Large travel data consortiums make this possible by aggregating first-party data from airlines, hotels, OTAs, and many more. For instance, Adara’s travel data consortium captures real-time shopping and booking behavior from over 300 leading travel brands. These data partnerships allow marketers to pinpoint individuals actively planning or dreaming about trips. Or even those who might be potential travelers due to their plan+purchase behavior.
It is proven that travelers are open to influence early in their planning stages. Nearly 3 in 5 travelers don’t have a specific destination in mind when they decide to take a trip. Just the “type of getaway” they feel inclined towards. This gives DMOs and travel brands a golden opportunity to sway undecided travelers with targeted inspiration. By using behavioral insights such as past travel history or recent searches, marketers can serve ads for destinations or services that align with each user’s interests. The goal is to appear in a traveler’s consideration set precisely when their intent is forming. Such precision was hard to achieve in broad campaigns of the past, but today’s data-driven targeting makes it feasible to speak to people instead of just audience profiles.
Personalization is Driving Higher Conversion and Engagement
One of the clear advantages of hyper-directed marketing is the boost in conversion rates and engagement that comes from personalization. By tailoring messages and offers to individual behavior and preferences, travel brands make their marketing far more attractive. According to Salesforce data, personalized messaging can boost conversion rates by up to 202%. Yes. A lot. This improvement means that a campaign leveraging traveler-specific interests (a very basic yet graphic example, a resort ad highlighting scuba diving to someone who has shown interest in marine adventures) can convert at more than double the rate of a generic ad. It’s no surprise that companies excelling at personalization generate substantially more revenue (about 40% more) than those that don’t.
Native advertising placed in contextually relevant environments has meant over 80% higher engagement for DMOs compared to standard display ads. In practice, this means that when a tourism board used native content (e.g. an integrated article or sponsored listing on a travel site) targeted to high-intent travelers, users interacted with it far more than they would with a random banner ad, especially considering ad noise is growingly frowned-upon and users are training their eyes to just disregard it if not immediately appealing or organic. Higher engagement ultimately feeds the funnel by driving more people to click, learn, and eventually book.
Measuring Attribution: Don’t Overlook the View-Through
The success of hyper-directed campaigns can be fully appreciated only if marketers measure beyond the last click. Travel decisions often involve multiple touchpoints and a longer consideration period.
Expedia Group found that travelers spend 33 days on average in the inspiration phase gathering ideas. During this time, many will see ads and be influenced by them without clicking immediately. This is where view-through attribution becomes critical.
Ignoring view-through data can lead to undervaluing key campaign elements. In fact, marketers report that turning off view-through attribution causes overall purchases to decline. The reasoning is: if you stop crediting ads that users merely view, you might pull back on effective top-of-funnel ads, ultimately losing sales that those ads were quietly driving. Especially in travel, where a person might see a destination ad, do more research, and book weeks later, measuring only last-click conversions will miss the true influence of your media spend. Modern attribution approaches use short view-through windows (often 1 day) alongside click-through windows (7+ days) to ensure campaigns get due credit for planting the seed of a conversion. As a result, travel marketers can optimize knowing which impressions are assisting conversions and adjust their spend accordingly rather than leaving those insights on the table.
Maximizing ROAS through Data-Driven Optimization
Perhaps the ultimate proof of hyper-directed marketing’s value is its impact on Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and overall ROI. By showing ads to the most relevant people at the moments that matter, travel brands are seeing significantly higher returns for each advertising dollar.
Hyper-directed campaigns also empower mid-campaign optimization. Since performance data comes in real-time (or near real-time), marketers can adjust their tactics on the fly. If one audience segment is clicking but not booking, while another segment is driving strong conversions, budgets can be reallocated mid-campaign to focus on the higher-performing group. If a certain creative isn’t resonating, data will show lower engagement and prompt a refresh of the content. This agility is a major shift from the old “launch and forget” approach. So, it´s better know how to address it efficiently, wouldn't you agree?
At Brands Travel, we have partnered up with Adara – a Rategain Company to provide DMOs and Hotel Management Companies in Latin America with access to hyper-targeted campaigns and result evaluation.
