Summer has been a busy season for travel in India this year. In a tussle to emerge as customer favourites, brands in the travel industry are counting on higher ad expenditure and marketing gimmicks.

As the world survives another economic slowdown, brands are becoming extra careful about spending the right way and hence it has become imperative to stay ahead of the competition and make the best use of their marketing budgets for this peak season.

Speaking about the summer season traffic, Pratik Mazumder, CMO, Mahindra Holidays & Resorts said, “Summers are an ideal time for families to travel, especially for kids who are eager to engage in outdoor and indoor activities. This April, Club Mahindra witnessed an occupancy of 88% which is by far the highest occupancy in the month of April. The months of May and June look equally promising with a forecast of 88% and 91% occupancies, respectively.’

Despite economic headwinds, people are keen on spending their money on travel this year as missing out on holidays doesn’t seem like an option anymore. Noting this, leaders in the industry think is the best way to be spending their ad money this summer to grab the customer’s attention.

From spending more on content marketing to curating campaigns before the season kicks in, industry leaders talk about what works best for them.

In an earnings call, David E. Stephenson CFO & Head-Employee Experience, Airbnb said: “In terms of the frontloading of marketing costs this year, it's just we're learning to operate better. We had seen such great success in our brand marketing campaigns, a strong return on investments in that last year. What we learned is that we just felt like we needed to do that earlier in the year and get out even more ahead of our peak travel summer season with our brand marketing.

The earlier we get that message out in the year, the better we can kind of reap that investment for the full year. So, this is purely about moving up the spend on kind of brand marketing earlier. And to a lesser extent, but it is an element of it as well, is investing in some of these new geographies where we haven't historically had brand marketing until actually expanding that marketing into more countries. So, our marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue will remain largely the same in 2023 as it was in 2022. It's just that we're frontloading more of the marketing to get the message out earlier.”

Shubham Khurana, Brand Head, Cleartrip talks about their recent big sale and says how they are trying to capitalize on their marketing budget. “As an organisation, we are at a stage where we want to invest in the brand. The frequency and scale of our marketing initiatives convey that. Having said this, as with every business, our marketing spend takes into account the seasonality factor. This is essential to capitalise on the organic demand.

“We recently concluded one of the biggest sale events of the year ‘Nation on Vacation’, which was well received by consumers (85% growth in user traffic) which again tells us something about the travel sentiment this summer. This was our second biggest marketing event of the year. In March, we clocked our ever highest numbers (1.3X of what we were doing at the start of the year).”

Daniel D’souza, President & Country Head, Leisure, SOTC Travel spoke about the rise in regional marketing for this category. “With experiential travel being a key driver for over 78% of respondents, the deep desire to explore fresh and unique bucket-list opportunities resonated with 65%. The impressive travel appetite emerging from regional India-Bharat has accelerated our focus on this high-potential segment via our expanded regional product and vernacular content/marketing. With the increasing demand for consumer convenience and the comfort of human touch/expertise, omnichannel/phygital channels are clearly seeing high demand (95%).”

Rajan Malhotra, Commercial Director, Conrad Bengaluru talks about how the company is looking at smarter spending this summer to make the most out of the heat up of the travel season. “With respect to ad and marketing spend, our focus has been towards content marketing where the content curated resonates and connects with our guests. Digital marketing as well is an imperative form of building the brand, on uplifting our hotel video marketing assets so that we can draw customers to your website from various digital activations. In 2021-22, 52% of online marketers cited video marketing as having the best ROI. We are also focusing on digital spends towards our brand website/ online portals, making sure that our hotels are available and bookable throughout these avenues.”

“With the rise of social media advertising across the industry, our efforts to strengthen across portals remain to be our key focus segment on our marketing strategies. Retargeting campaigns and Display Ads are also our major focus areas for 2023,” Malhotra added.

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