The “Travel Shapes Us” campaign is a shift from the brand’s past efforts “Power of Travel” and “Roam Around The World.” Traditionally, the loyalty program has emphasized the stays at Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio of brands, but this campaign is designed to highlight the experiences of travel itself.

“Travel Shapes Us” illustrates the brand’s new strategic perspective to illuminate the experiences, connections and memories that continue after a journey. The campaign highlights a number of bucket list experiences that Marriott Bonvoy offers. 

The film “You Are The Greatest Souvenir,” highlights three unique travel experiences – outdoor lodging, award-winning dining, and boutique hotels. 

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Priceline’s latest campaign is a continuation of the “Go To Your Happy Price” brand platform. The latest iteration is inspired by research that found that sports tourism is on the rise with 67% of millennials and Gen Z saying that they traveled for sporting events in 2024, as well as data that showed that many Americans spend hours “dreamscrolling” without ever booking a trip.

“Our new campaign taps into a real human insight: Americans spend hours scrolling their phones dreaming about their perfect trips, but let life – price, logistics, work – get in the way of actually going,” said Lesley Klein, senior vice president of strategy and brand marketing at Priceline. “We want to change that. We want to inspire travelers to stop just scrolling through travel content and use a great Priceline deal to get out there and have real life experiences.”

The campaign is running during the height of college basketball season so that the brand can tap into the cultural moment with integrated programming including the bookable bracket with DraftKings and exclusive Buzzer Beater Deals. 

“We want this campaign to connect with younger travelers, especially Millennials and Gen Z, who are actively seeking out experiences such as live sports, concerts, festivals, and international trips,” said Klein. “We use humor and relatable moments to show these travelers that booking their dream trip – whether it’s catching their favorite artist at a music festival or watching their favorite player score a buzzer beater – is easier than they think.”

“At its core, it’s all about making travel affordable and accessible so everyone can be there for the moments that matter to them,” Klein added. “We know travel makes people happier and our research shows how deeply that travel desire is baked into our everyday lives, as well as what’s stopping them from doing so. Whether it’s the price tag or the complexity of booking, we want to break down these barriers and help silence the worries that are holding them back.” 

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“Technology is a powerful tool, but it’s people that make true innovation possible,” said Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta, at a keynote at CES in The Sphere. “We’re on the brink of a new era, and I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate how the Delta team will leverage cutting-edge advancements to propel our next century of flight.”

The keynote kicked off with a monologue by awarding winning actress Viola Davis. “100 years in the making made possible by you the believers, the backers, the champions who gave Delta the wings to fly even higher we’ve been connecting the world for a century now beating the odds breaking barriers,” said Davis. “When they say slow down we say catch up and when they say it’s impossible we say sit back relax and enjoy the flight we’ll never stop reaching for the skies.”

The presentation brought to life the potential for new innovations through a fully immersive 4D flight journey at The Sphere. Bastion used the stage to introduce Delta Concierge, a new customer experience tool that uses Gen AI and voice processing to listen, understand and respond intelligently to customers’ unique needs in real time. Services include checking in without needing to log into an app or email account, as well as ordering a Joby, an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing aircraft, that lets customers skip the traffic and order a ride in this aircraft. 

Another one of Delta’s new innovations introduced on the journey includes an upgraded in-flight entertainment experience. The airline is teaming with Thales Avionics to create a next-generation Delta Sync seatback experience. The tool allows fliers to log into their SkyMiles account to create personalized experiences from check in to bag collection. The upgrade also includes 4K displays and bluetooth sync capabilities. Future enhancements will include guided wellness and expanded options for customizing the food and beverage experience. 

Delta also highlighted strategic partnerships that are designed with the end consumer in mind. The company has teamed with YouTube to offer ad-free access to the app in Delta flights. Tom Brady, who appeared on stage, will host a wellness show. A partnership with Uber will soon result in getting SkyMiles for Uber rides. The airline is also working with Airbus on new innovations in sustainable plane design.

The evening ended with a performance by Lenny Kravitz, who closed the night with his song “Fly Away.”

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“I suspect next year’s travel will look a lot like this year’s travel,” said Jennifer Bridie, vice president of marketing at Southwest Airlines. She noted that booking patterns have shifted and returned to a pre-pandemic booking curve.

“The economy is still strong, but now we have to work harder,” said Laurel Greatrix, vice president of brand & communications at Viator, an online travel marketplace owned by TripAdvisor. The years since the end of the pandemic lockdown saw triple-digit increases in travel volume, but “you never know what is you and what is the world” she said. Now marketing has to use data more effectively to drive traffic: “We can’t be just a warm body,” she said.  

The pandemic was tough on the airlines, which saw a “commoditization” of airline travel, as carriers became more flexible about cancellations and rebookings, Bridie explained. Now, a lot of those airlines are going back to their past practices, she noted. For Southwest, that is good news, because it can lean on the flexibility that’s always been part of its brand identity. 

“You have to be able to drive that loyalty back to the brand,” she said. Southwest has announced new products such as enhancements of its companion pass, vacation bundles and interline partnerships and will continue rolling out new features in 2025 to keep its core leisure travelers loyal. 

“We’re really excited for what lies ahead,” Bridie said. 

“I think the bigger thing is connecting all the dots,” said Nicolette Harper, vice president of global marketing and media at Marriott International. The hotel chain is focusing on retargeting travelers across their journeys, using mobility data to connect messaging from airport out of home to inflight entertainment through to buying ads in ride-share services to “tell the next chapter of our story.” 

Travel marketers will focus some of their data power and media spend on loyalty programs in 2025, fine tuning their offerings with technology to fight off commoditization. Every brand now has a loyalty program and “it doesn’t feel so rewarding anymore,” said Marissa Yoss, vice president of media and brand marketing at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. The programs are complicated and redeeming rewards is usually difficult, she said. Voss noted Wynham has created a social media-based effort called “what’s the points?” to highlight the ease of use of its loyalty program and promote it to younger users. 

Green travel and movie-inspired destinations

Technology—specifically artificial intelligence—will provide an assist for both marketers looking to target consumers, and for consumers navigating the wide range of choices available. Harper noted that Marriott is “building a massive infrastructure on the adtech side” to support all its brands worldwide with the ability to create and target ads that are brand-appropriate. 

Travel brands are playing up their big selling points to target a consumer base that came back from the pandemic lockdown with new appetites, and to focus on the rising clout of Generation Z, the consumers born since 1996. Travel marketers acknowledge the attitudes and media consumption habits of this demographic will shape a lot of work next year and beyond.

“We’re seeing our demographic continue to skew increasingly young, which is exciting,” said Eliot Hamlisch, chief commercial officer of Amtrak. The railway is leaning heavily on its lower carbon footprint to attract Gen Z travelers concerned about the effects of air travel on climate change, he said. It launched a new “Retrain Travel” campaign on Oct. 1 premised on reintroducing rail travel as a less stressful, more sustainable transportation mode than cars or airplanes. 

Travel has come to be an expectation for consumers, said Voss. She noted Wyndham is seeing a proliferation of “set travel”—consumers who, after binge watching streaming content, want to check out the location of their favorite shows. Expedia identified “jet setting as a trend for 2025, with travelers heading to Cape Town to see the locations of Netflix’s “One Piece” or to Wyoming and Montana for the Paramount+ show “Yellowstone.” Yoss also noted that sports travel is on the rise, thanks to the afterglow of this summer’s Olympics and the anticipation for the 2026 World Cup, which will be played in the U.S. and Canada. 

After a couple of banner years, “It is grit and ingenuity that is going to get us through the next couple,” said Greatrix, “It was revenge travel, and now it’s a lot of intent-based marketing. Now we have to work harder.” 

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“The struggle to get group trips out of the planning phase and into reality is a feeling so many can relate to,” said Khary Barnes, managing director and general manager of Marriott Co-Brands Cards at Chase, in a release. “Bold Chat Court sheds light on this common travel pain and aims to help make the next trip more within reach.”

The Bold Chat Court promotion is designed to draw attention to the newly introduced benefits added to the Marriott Bonvoy Bold Card, including the ability to break up qualifying travel purchases into monthly payments, expanded opportunities and categories to earn reward points and automatic Marriott Bonvoy Silver Elite status, which includes priority late checkout and 10% more points for Marriott Bonvoy hotel stays.

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According to Booking.com, 62% of Americans consider spending quality time with their family as the main motivation for traveling this year. In addition, 24% of American travelers have expressed a desire to stay at the home of a famous celebrity. 

Booking.com’s Welcome to Atlanta Summer Send-Off promises the best of both worlds, complete with celebrity treatments (limos, catered meals and indoor theaters) and family activities (paddle boating on a lake, access to private basketball and tennis courts, and an indoor movie theater). In addition, members of Booking,com’s Genius loyalty program will have additional add-ons. A level 3 Genius member will receive a personalized breakfast-in-bed service from Ludacris’s favorite local cafe.

“As a dad of four kids myself, family time is incredibly important to me, and I’m thrilled to open my home so guests can create unforgettable memories as a family. I’m all about making it easier for everyone to celebrate life’s special moments, and I appreciate how Booking.com makes it easy for everyone to experience the world. It’s going to be epic!” Ludacris, said in a statement.

Ludacris spoke at Brand Innovators’ Cannes event and shared that he only works with brands that he likes. “I literally align myself with brands nowadays that are a part of my everyday lifestyle,” said Ludacris on the Brand Innovators Influential Beach Stage at Cannes. “Ask my family. My wife is here today. I eat peanut butter every single day.”

He recently starred in an ad for Knorr’s Taste. In the spot, Ludacris remastered Black Sheep’s hit song, “The Choice is Yours,” and cooks Knorr’s Lemon Pepper Chicken Cutlets recipe. He encourages his friends to skip fast food delivery in exchange for a real meal, with the flavors of Knorr. 

Booking.com is no stranger to creating celebrity travel experiences for its customers. Previously, the site has created similar events hosted by Martha Stewart, Mariah Carey, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

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Retail media networks are no longer the domain of merchants who want to leverage shopper data and real-world locations to sell in-store advertising. Travel companies—hotel chains, airlines and even the ride-share companies—are leveraging their rich data from guests and connections with other verticals to offer brands an opportunity for personalized, contextual advertising at scale in a post-cookie world. 

“The retail media space is exciting for a number of reasons,” said Matt Wurst, CMO of Genuin, a video provider that works with many brands and networks. For travel companies, he explained, these networks offer an opportunity to monetize their owned media platforms by connecting brands with their audience. And in addition to creating a revenue stream, the platforms also drive user engagement and time on site, which drives return on investment and other key performance indicators, said Wurst: “The audience is there, they are receptive, and it’s a contextually relevant play where everyone wins.” 

Retail advertising is on the rise, with spending in the segment expected to grow about 30% in 2024. The increase is powered largely by these networks, and their programmatic offerings, which are expected to rake in $20 billion in spending, up from $7.5 billion in 2023. There is obviously a lot of money to be made; during a conference call with analysts last year, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company expects to make $1 billion in revenue from advertising in 2024. 

Travel companies have taken that lesson to heart. Marriott became the first hospitality company to launch a retail media network, with the introduction of Marriott Media Network in 2022. The same year, Uber launched Journey Ads and rival Lyft introduced Lyft Media.  And the ranks of travel RMNs keep growing. United Airlines took to the stage during the recent Cannes Lions festival to introduce its new retail media network, Kinective Media. And travel platform Expedia launched Expedia Group Media Solutions during its annual conference in May. 

Retail advertising has come a long way from the days of in-store displays and banner ads on e-commerce sites. McKinsey estimated the sector could grow to $100 billion in ad spending by 2026 and this new breed of commerce media now includes shoppable ads, addressable TV and many other channels. And as McKinsey’s analysts noted: “The first-party data and customer touchpoints owned by hospitality brands, travel and hotel providers… may also lend themselves to contextual advertising that consumers opt into in return for more relevant, tailored experiences.”

The travel companies are setting sail into a marketplace that is becoming more competitive. Home Depot, an established player that launched its RMN in 2018, recently rebranded it as Orange Apron Media and hosted what it called an InFront presentation for media buyers modeled after the TV upfronts, to attract more advertiser dollars; and companies in other verticals, such as JP Morgan Chase, have also entered the fray recently. 

Retail media networks have gained popularity in recent years as merchants benefit from offering scale to advertisers, leveraging the media they own via their real-life locations and their e-commerce portals. Expedia has more than 20 years’ experience publishing more than 200 websites in over 70 countries, which makes it “no stranger to travel publishing,” said Angelique Miller, VP, Media Studio, at Expedia Group Media Solutions. Richard Nunn, CEO of MileagePlus noted United flew 145 million people in 2023 and it was already serving up ads on its in-flight screens. “We were already doing this in reality,” before launching Kinective, he said. 

And the audience travel networks can deliver is a desirable one. As Khosrowshahi told the financial analysts, Journey Ads offers “a very, very high end customer” to advertisers and boasted that engagement in Journey Ads is high, with 3% click through rates. 

Data advantages, educational challenges 

The travel companies are in a strong position to compete for ad dollars, because they have rich stores of data that offer insight into consumers, gathered through their loyalty programs. United’s MileagePlus has nearly 40 million members worldwide; Marriott’s Bonvoy has over 196 million. “Obviously, we’re sitting on a bunch of data,” said Nunn, noting that the data is high-quality and verified, since traveler information has to be accurate for a passenger to get on a plane. 

“A shift to a cookieless world will make it much harder for brands to track and target travelers as they move through what has become a very complex journey,” said Miller.  A company like Expedia, which is less reliant on third-party data, can reduce the impact of cookie deprecation, especially at a time when the path to purchase is such a fragmented journey, she said. 

“With a shift in how people are seeking inspiration, searching for, and booking travel, we continue to adapt and innovate on behalf of our partners to match these shifts,” Miller said. She noted that Expedia research has found the average traveler goes through 141 pages of travel-related content over 45 days before travel. “This fragmentation teaches us all that it’s more important than ever to meet the customers where they are,” she said. By using data to understand their habits and preferences, brands can make better decisions, she explained. 

By connecting travel data, dwell times—those stretches of time spent waiting for a flight or traveling between airport and hotel, can be transformed into an opportunity, said Nunn. While an arrival delay can be a pain point for a traveler, an advertiser can step in with information that is useful in context—offering a traveler who’s renting a house the opportunity to order a grocery delivery in advance, for example. 

And while destinations and other travel-related advertisers are making wide use of travel RMNs, other types of brands can also benefit from the contextual advantage. Nunn noted Kinective’s launch clients included both travel companies, but also brands such as Chase and Macy’s. 

“I think the opportunity of this whole media network first-party opportunity is how we collaborate and not compete. That is where the publisher side has fallen down in recent years,” Nunn said. He noted that for many brands, additional media spend is being swept into the same social media and search portals they have always used, when RMNs offer a better targeted opportunity. 

The data-driven approach and the sharing of data open up some concerns about privacy and sharing proprietary information. As Miller explained: “data protection is a big consideration for anyone who is working in this space.” Many RMNs rely on data “clean rooms” that allow brands to collaborate while protecting data privacy.   

The travel companies also have to shift their perception of what they can do to accommodate different partnerships. Nunn noted United has run tests with LiveNation and TicketMaster to serve ticket offers to travelers based on their destinations.

Understanding the various audiences that have to be involved when connecting media properties could be the biggest challenge to an RMN, said Nunn. “We’re an airline. Many of these networks were set up by retailers,” he said. Launching Kinctive required an education effort to “communicate the value of the data and the asset we’re sitting on,” he said. “We had to say: why us?” 

RMNs give travel companies the opportunity to turn their loyalty programs from a cost center into a revenue opportunity, as well as monetizing their websites, digital displays and other owned media channels, said Genuin’s Wurst:  It’s really an opportunity to reclaim ownership of not just the data, but of content, of community experiences and the relationship with the consumer.” 

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“With the Luggage Tagged Sweepstakes, we’re encouraging Executive Club members to expand their horizons, redeem their Avios and explore the world with British Airways and the oneworld Alliance,” said Oliver Currell, head of joint business and partnerships, IAG Loyalty, in a statement. “It showcases our commitment as a global airline to connect our customers with the world and provide unmatched value.”

The luggage sets designed by King, who specializes in creating travel prints depicting destinations all over the world, also include nods to the card’s 30th anniversary and are inspired by travel destinations in New York, London, Santorini, Paris and Cape Town. 

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Booking.com is in the second year of its five-year partnership with MLB. The travel site is using the partnership to be more nuanced about marketing. Rather than just promoting themselves as sources to book a vacation, the company is promoting itself as the go-to site for baseball fans to make hotel reservations when traveling to see their favorite team.

Last year, the site encouraged fans to play ball in more places and book like an MVP. The new effort was created based on the insight that friendly baseball rivalry lets fans bond over regional pride, which also influences curiosity for fans that want to see new places. Showing Yankees fans enjoying Boston or Cardinals fans enjoying Chicago plays up the rivalries, while showing off the accommodations. 

Other travel sites have found benefits in targeting consumers based on passion points and fandom. Expedia examined the large concert tours of 2024 and created marketing around the cities with major arenas and music venues, pointing out affordable destinations with hotel rooms that might be cheaper than concert tickets.

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The summer travel season is quickly approaching, and Southwest Airlines is taking this opportunity to highlight the convenience it offers its customers as part of its everyday course of doing business. At a time when the travel industry seems to be full of complexity of points and date blackouts and extra fees, Southwest is looking to be seen as the option offering simplicity.

“We are the most flexible airline, and we take pride in offering benefits that are the most flexible,” said Julia Melle, director of brand and content at Southwest Airlines. “At Southwest, we believe in connecting our customers to what matters most to them and their passions.”

Using the theme, “The Big Flex,” which carries a double meaning of flexibility and the slang term of showing off a victory over others, the campaign highlights the stories of customers who have benefitted from the flexible policies in humorous and engaging ways. 

One spot, for instance, depicts a man with a head of curly hair proudly walking through a hotel lobby and out onto a street. When he stops at a corner, he proudly notes to a bystander that he packed two bags for free on Southwest, adding he packs a lot of shampoo. Pointing to his hair, he says, “Can’t get this with three ounces,” referring to the carry-on restrictions for liquids. 

“The campaign is centered around real-life stories we’ve heard from our customers about how they take advantage of our points of difference, including what they pack in their bags that fly free and having the flexibility to extend their vacation because of no change fees,” Melle said. “We’ve always been a customer-centric company, but this is our way of reinforcing that promise to deliver the best possible experience every time you fly with us.”

The Big Flex campaign began running this week on streaming, broadcast, cable, social media and audio platforms. In addition, Southwest has developed partnerships with online creators and influencers including Kelsey June Jensen and Swagg to highlight some of the 121 destinations that Southwest services, Melle said. She did not provide further details on how those partnerships and local campaigns would play out.

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