How Snapchat is trying to win more travel ad dollars

Snap is looking to connect travel advertisers with future vacationers through a new ad format that pulls from location data.

Read more: How Airbnb is marketing its new booking approach

Snap’s new dynamic travel ads will specifically serve hotels, airlines, tours, and online travel agencies, by building on the app’s location features. 

Dynamic ads are designed to automatically change in order to display content and promotions specifically tailored to each viewer. Travel advertisers will be able to use targeting based on a Snap user’s travel intent. For example, a Snap user in New York City might be shown a relevant flight from John F. Kennedy airport to another location. Or if Snapchat senses a user is away from their home location, they might be shown an ad for a local hotel. Travel ads also might be served through traditional retargeting, like if a Snap user visits a partner travel website. The app ads will redirect the user to the travel company’s site.

After two years of restricted travel, consumers are eager to get out of town. The World Travel and Tourism Council, which represents the global travel and tourism sector, estimates that U.S. travel and tourism could rebound strongly this year to reach $2 trillion dollars, up 6.2% from 2019 levels. Still, there are some obstacles to hitting the road. According to a May report by Redpoint Global, a consumer data platform, 29% of U.S. customers said they were concerned about health and safety when traveling, 25% cited the costs of travel, and 17% pointed to gas prices. 

But travel companies seem optimistic: United Airlines kicked off a new global campaign this month, as did Hotels.com (minus Captain Obvious). Best Western also turned to location data as a way to alert customers about nearby vacancies, and even predict when a traveler would cancel their booking. And Airbnb just launched a campaign focused on types of destinations.

“As the summer vacation season approaches, travel businesses are looking to optimize reach and drive conversion,” Sharon Silverstein, head of U.S. verticals at Snap, said in a blog post announcing the new format. “Snapchatters are a particularly salient audience for the industry, with many eager and more likely to travel than users of other platforms.”

According to a 2021 market research study commissioned by Snap, 76% of Snap users are making plans or have already returned to their pre-pandemic behaviors. A GWI market research report from last year found that Snap users are 37% more likely to book travel after seeing an advertisement. 

Booking.com and Etihad Airways have already tried out the new dynamic travel ads. Booking.com pulled images directly from their product catalog to serve users ads with locally relevant listings based on products they had already viewed.

“By using Snapchat Dynamic Ads, we were able to maximize relevance by matching customers to specific destinations, dramatically improving performance metrics across the booking funnel in the process,” Phil Dodwell, Etihad’s marketing media lead, said in a statement. “The prospecting solution in particular is currently the best-in-class catalog solution for Dynamic Travel Ads on social and we are extremely pleased with the results we have been able to achieve. We look forward to building on this approach in Q2 and beyond.”