VIDEO: Digital marketing to the rescue? Reevaluating best practices in travel

Is it time for a marketing reset? Or will the roles played by Google, Facebook, online travel agencies and other partners resume as before?

For travel companies seeking a comeback, there are safe bets and risky bets - who will be travel's next marketing superhero?

Digital travel marketing has never been easy, but the pandemic has left the entire ecosystem with the huge challenge of how to restart.

Hotels, destinations and other players have a clean slate to create a digital marketing strategy and cherry pick the partners and elements that will work most efficiently.

However, powerful players such as Google and the social media platforms are ever present and ready to take a cut of the profit.

Direct booking became a huge trend over the course of the pandemic, but there are questions about how sustainable that is and how travel companies, particularly hotels, might take advantage of it.

At a Phocuswright Europe session on digital marketing, Chris Blaine, vice president, EMEA at Sojern and Pablo Delgado, CEO of Mirai, discussed the first steps travel companies can take in building a direct strategy.

They talked about beating the larger players at their own game by gathering and understanding first-party data as a means to build and fuel a direct strategy.

They also touched on the importance of partnerships and collaboration, as well as exploring new, lower-risk marketing models.

View the full discussion with PhocusWire's Linda Fox below.