Did you know experts predict that in 2022, the travel industry’s ad spend will increase by 36%? Global travel is beginning to recover: travel and tourism marketers are gearing up to welcome travelers again, especially with the pent-up demand from the pandemic!
Expedia presented this ad at the 2022 Superbowl, featuring Ewan McGregor:
The messaging speaks to how travel is what enriches our lives and those experiences are what stays with us forever.
Travel marketers need to get the customer journey right because the experience starts with someone researching their next travel destination.
The travel customer journey has 5 stages:
- Dreaming
- Planning
- Booking
- Exploring
- Remembering
- What are Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)?
- Examples of OTAs
- How Do Online Travel Agencies Work?
- How Do OTAs Make Money?
- Who Should List on an OTA?
- Why Do Travelers Like Booking Through OTAs?
- Why Should You Advertise on Online Travel Agencies?
- Most Common Types of Advertising on OTAs
- How We Can Elevate Your Travel Ad Strategy
What are Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)?
- Conduct research
- Compare prices
- Read reviews
- Book hotel and/or flights
- Rent cars
- Purchase vacation packages and more
Examples of Online Travel Agencies
- Priceline
- Kayak
- Agoda
- Cheapflights
- OpenTable
- Momondo
- Rentalcars.com
- Hotels.com
- vrbo
- trivago
- Orbitz
- Travelocity
- Hotwire
- Wotif
- Expedia Cruises
- Egencia
- CarRentals.com
How Do Online Travel Agencies Work?


How Do OTAs Make Money?
Who Should List on an OTA?
Why Do Travelers Like Booking Through Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)?
A survey revealed the top 10 reasons travelers prefer using OTAs.

Why Should You Advertise on Online Travel Agencies?
- Grow brand awareness
- Increase ad reach and bookings
- Test promotions
- Stimulate sales by creating a sense of urgency (i.e., 47 people are currently viewing this hotel)
- Reach international audiences that otherwise would be expensive to advertise to through other channels
Wider Reach with Less Investment

Better Targeting Options
Online Travel Agencies have a LOT of consumer data. That’s why they offer rich targeting options for marketers. Expedia offers an exclusive function for you to leverage first-party data to reach travel shoppers.
Accessible & Preferred by All Age Groups
An Oxford Economics x Expedia study revealed that OTAs are popular amongst all age groups, and over 18% of travelers say they use OTAs to book their travel (all or part of it).
In-Depth Data Insights
Online Reviews Help You Sell
90% of travelers admit online reviews influence their decisions. Reading someone’s first-hand experience is credible and even relatable.
For example, if Emma is looking for a dog-friendly accommodation, she could filter reviews on OTA sites for keywords on “pet-friendly” or “dog” and see how the experiences were of other guests who brought their pet.
You can view online reviews as digital word-of-mouth referrals. Referrals have an average conversion rate of 9.5% so listing on OTAs gives you the advantage of driving awareness of qualified travelers!
Encourages More Traffic to Your Website
Users might discover you on an Online Travel Agency and decide to look you up via search engine, which drives more traffic to your website. Users might even end up converting on your website instead of an OTA, which saves you from paying commission. Listing on OTAs is essential for travel-related businesses.
Most Common Types of Advertising on OTAs
Display
Sponsored
Sponsored listings mean you will show up in the top results for people searching for accommodations/attractions that match the parameters you have set, like keyword, location etc. (Exactly like how Search Ads work on Microsoft Bing or Google). You can expect more clicks to your listing than your competitors this way.
This is what it would look like:

How We Can Enhance Your Travel Ad Strategy
Custom Campaigns For Your Needs
Cross-Channel Approach (Not Just OTAs!)
Consider branching out and experimenting with other ad platforms to maximize audience reach. At War Room, we can weave your strategies across channels like Search, Display, and Social (and all these other channels). All the ad data would feed into each other, forming an ecosystem (instead of all channels being siloed). This leads to better retargeting and budget allocation and saves you more ad dollars down the road.
Pinterest and Over-The-Top (OTT) are examples of channels in which we’re seeing great reception for our client campaigns lately.
Klick&Mortar: From Ad View to Physical Visit
Klick&Mortar is our proprietary technology that tracks when an ad is seen online until the user shows up to visit your location. The goal is to allocate your ad budget precisely and identify user behavior and patterns. You can plan your future marketing strategy based on the data-backed insights.
Here is how we helped Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association in driving traveler visits and delivering a 9 million economic impact to their region:
Let’s Work Together!
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