Top Tips for Advertisers in the Tourism Sector

While each sector shapes digital advertising in its own way, the tourism sector stands out with its seasonal and instantaneous dynamic structure, bringing strategic steps in advertising efforts to the forefront. In this variable structure, many advertising platforms have to adapt to this dynamic nature. For example, on an e-commerce site, product prices can be fixed and change weekly according to each market, whereas on a vacation site, prices can be different and instantly variable for each market. In this situation, advertisers and managers are compelled to implement a dynamic advertising strategy.

There is a general concept in advertising platforms called the “learning phase.” This period can vary between 7–14 days depending on the platform. We can define the learning phase as the system's analysis period to gather data such as the entry of an advertising campaign into the competitive environment, cost formation, and the quality of the website you are directing traffic to, ensuring that you advertise at the most suitable cost. These expected durations can cause time loss and, consequently, sales loss in tourism sector advertising.

Our Founder of IQUEEM, Berkun Meral, explains his experiences in advertising processes in the tourism sector: “For example, after setting up an ad set as recommended by Google and Facebook platforms, we don’t wait 5–6 days for the ad set to complete its learning phase; we can end up changing an ad set every two days based on real-time data coming from the facilities. Especially if there is a call center within the system you manage, due to a number of negative calls within 3 hours, we might change ads within the same day. Are we complaining about this situation? No! Because we are getting performance and believe that our strategies are progressing correctly.”

Here are the top tips compiled from Berkun Meral’s experiences for dynamic advertising management and success in the tourism sector:

1. Know the Facility Well Before Advertising.

In the advertising industry, we always say to know the product first. In the tourism sector, we say to know the facility first. We don’t mean to visit the facility in person, but to be familiar with every detail, its strengths, and weaknesses. Since the person who will make a purchase through digital advertising will research the facility you are advertising through these platforms, look at various review sites, the website, and social media. Determine your strategies based on the data you gather from these channels. Learn your facility’s target audience very well. Research past guest data. Delivering the right advertisement to the right target audience at the right time will form the first step to success.

2. Develop Innovative Advertising Strategies.

When starting to advertise in the tourism sector, it is an important step to move away from conventional advertising strategies and develop your own advertising strategies. With digital advertising trainings, you can learn how these ads are run up to a certain point, but what will add value to you is your strategy. All platforms are already designed for the end user to advertise in the easiest way possible. What will set you apart is how you design these ads. Create your own strategy yourself; platform representatives' support is undoubtedly important, but remember that the friends who provide that support are also recommending strategies for a market. Therefore, they might not be able to understand your sector and, of course, the facility as well as you do. If you are not at a level to design your own strategy, stay close to those who are successful in this matter.

3. Pay Attention to Budget Control.

Like every sector, the tourism sector is one where we expect high performance at low costs. Often, there is an expectation that the monthly advertising spend remains within 3% of the turnover. Advertisers know that advertising platforms periodically call advertisers and make some suggestions. When they call us, they usually suggest “you need to increase your budget.” Yes, they are right, but they don’t think much about how competition is progressing in the tourism sector. For example, if the hotel next to me spends 30,000 TL a month and I spend 3,000 TL in response, they are right. However, suggesting to match the budget of a well-known and selling travel operator is not a correct direction. Another issue we have with platform representatives is the “monthly budget” topic. We do have a representative budget, but in the tourism sector, you cannot stick to this budget because facilities might issue “Stop Sale” on some dates amidst ads. In such cases, you might need to cut the budget and run ads focused on brand awareness.

4. Emphasize Ad Monitoring and Production.

The general advertising logic is to design ads at the beginning of the month, publish them, and let these ads run for 2–3 months. This will condemn you to an inefficient advertising world. Ads should be monitored 24 hours a day, and ads that do not perform within at least 3–5 days should be revised. The duration might be short and contrary to the system's logic, but rest assured, if you learn to read your ad statistics well, they will somewhat indicate what kind of results you can expect within 1–2 days. At a certain point, you will be able to even predict what kind of turnover you can achieve at the end of the month with 2-day ads. Of course, this is not immediate; it will be an experience that will benefit you after advertising the facility for a long time.

After summarizing these suggestions, advertising managers might say, “This way, your cost per click, cost per impression, and cost per conversion will increase.” No, they are not. When you revise your ads very frequently, your cost per unit might increase, but because you prevent wasting money on an ad set that you think won’t work, your costs are positively affected. Therefore, we see a dynamic advertising strategy as the biggest secret to our success in advertising efforts.