Marketing tips

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, October 2, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today. 

For ultra-luxury hotel brands, marketing often relies on close-ups of infinity pools and champagne flutes. Carson Glover, marketing director for The Peninsula Hotels, jokingly sums up the traditional approach this way: “Women looking out at things.”

Stratis Batayas, a first-time hotel owner in Greece, is better at inventing creative concepts for guests than knowing the latest techniques in global hotel marketing and distribution.

Visitors to Italy’s summer hotspot Lake Como are spoilt for choice when it comes to souvenirs, but a can of local air probably isn’t top of their shopping list. 

Google has long let hotels buy ads at the top of its search results. Yet these paid ads have only shared generic, static information about a property. Google said Monday it had changed that by allowing hotels to add “rich data” — such as real-time rates, images, and user-review star ratings.

Visit Florida launched a new campaign Monday to inform tourists that many parts of the state are open and ready to welcome visitors after hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Japan is a key expansion market for Airbnb, which launched a marketing campaign there Friday.

For a U.S. state with just over 4.5 million people, Louisiana punches above its weight when it comes to tourism. In 2023, the state brought in 43 million visitors. 

Amtrak launched a national marketing campaign on Tuesday to convince travelers that trains are a smarter alternative to planes and cars.

Expedia’s short-term rental platform Vrbo is trying to attract hosts with a new line of ads that offer the same promise it advertises to renters: a stress-free alternative to competitors like Airbnb.

Switzerland is trying to persuade business travelers to extend their trips through a new marketing campaign.

Want to spread a company’s brand awareness across Latin America? Teaming with Shakira might not be a bad option.

Booking and Expedia spend a ton on marketing: Nearly $13 billion combined in 2023, up from $10 billion in 2019. And it’s the largest expense for both companies, accounting for roughly half of their total operating expenses. 

Hilton has partnered with Indian actor Sidharth Malhotra to extend its global marketing platform, ‘Hilton. For The Stay’ in the Indian market. The campaign would be driven with new initiatives and investments tailored to India, the company said in a statement. 

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel said he’s disappointed that the company’s U.S. short-term rental portfolio doesn’t “have near the number or the type of home accommodations in the U.S. to be fully competitive.”

Intrepid Travel has overhauled its marketing strategy in the past few years.

When it came down to it, Google didn’t want to anger its core customers — advertisers — and this week announced it won’t phase out third-party cookies in its Chrome browser as planned.

With its number of hosts and bookings in the Paris region booming ahead of the start of the Olympics this month, a new Airbnb commercial is advising travelers to avoid hotels if they want to discover the essence of the city.

In Paris, the fanfare usually associated with the build-up to the Olympic Games have been overshadowed by another event taking place — a snap parliamentary election.

Early in 2020, Airbnb diverted about $800 million in spend on performance marketing — mostly Google keyword advertising — and tilted more toward marketing its brand in avenues like video, social media and public relations.

Airbnb hasn’t been vocal about its strategy for experiences since it paused adding new ones last year or even a couple of weeks ago when it confirmed it has been removing some experiences providers from its platform.