By: Molly Panos
Have you ever considered how you came up with your last girl’s trip, family vacation, or weekend getaway? Where did the idea for a vacation to Greece come from or a bachelor’s trip to Vegas? Travel decisions are made every day based on marketing influences. As much as you control where you spend your money, it is swayed heavily by the many different tactics used by travel marketers to get you to want to travel to the advertised destination. From the spark of finding a new place to visit to booking and how you book to the activities you do when you arrive, marketing helps to guide these decisions.
The Journey To A Destination Decision In 2025
Going on a journey is not just for travelers or adventure seekers; it is also for consumers. Marketers often compare consumer behavior to a journey flowing from one step to the next making decisions along the way. The consumer journey begins with awareness or recognition. When you hit that point during the year of just needing a vacation! A special event comes up, traveling for an anniversary, or your kids’ school vacation where it is time to take off. This is the start of the consumers’ decision journey, making that first resolution of needing a vacation.
After making this very important choice what next? Typically, consumers will begin to search. Hitting TikTok, google, YouTube, Instagram for information or inspiration. Through this you start comparing options, prices, dates, times, etc. Then consumers reach a purchase decision and book the trip, the flights, excursions, make restaurant reservations, experiencing everything that destination has to offer. Lastly, as marketers we see consumer’s post purchase behavior such as post trip sharing. This can be seen through an Instagram post from Paris, a favorite influencers brand trip to the Hamptons, reviews from a family trip to Walt Disney World. Sharing your own content to help inspire and influence the next set of travelers. In this new era of technology in 2025, there has been an increase in technology-driven planning when it comes to travel. Google has estimated that around 13% of consumers’ time spent online is used for travel planning and searches. This is a huge opportunity for marketers to persuade people through search ads, targeted displays, email campaigns, price alerts, brand content, and so much more. You are just one click away from the destination of your dreams or the destination that has been prompted to you through marketers working with adds, social media, email, and so many other ways you may not have realized which got you to that destination decision.
The Algorithm Made Me Do It: How Social Media And User-Generated Content (UGC) Is Used As The New Travel Brochure
Have you ever been scrolling on social media and came across a gorgeous sunset view over the ocean from the balcony of a 5-star villa and wanted to just step into that photo? Well then you have been subject to travel marketing at its finest. Leisure travel has been increasing significantly since 2023 with an expanding desire for experience especially among the younger generations (millennials and Gen Z). The compound annual growth rate (CPGR) for the leisure travel market is currently estimated at 22% between 2024–2030 leading travel marketers to see an upward trend in this industry. Research on the “Influence of Social Networks in Travel Decisions” has shown that 90% of people are motivated to travel after seeing photos on social media. Basically, your friends Instagram stories, vacation photo dumps, or travel highlight reels are all free forms of advertising for that destination. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all act as virtual brochures for these travel destinations, but why do they work so well? Social media is able to encompass the visual, social, and persistent side of marketing which is continuously getting these images and ideas in front of consumers to help guide their purchasing decisions. This type of user-generated content has been perceived by consumers as more trustworthy, getting their advice and recommendations from travelers who are unscripted or unpaid. After seeing this content, consumers can experience a fear of missing out or FOMO. Travel marketers use FOMO and design promotions such as limited time offers and discounts as well as use travel trends and viral destinations to create a sense of urgency for the consumer leading to bookings or decisions for future travel plans.
Caught Flights, Not Feelings… Thanks To Influencer And AI Marketing
Influencers have become a huge part of our world today, creating an entirely new work force of entrepreneurs allowing for a whole new category for marketers to work within. Influencers have had a major impact on our lives today; we follow their recommendations, trends, style, and product reviews. These are tools that marketers can use to their advantage. Influencers can be a very lucrative part of a marketing campaign. They control the narrative from their perspective, not just showing a picture of a beach, but telling a story of their trip from the food they ate to the shops they bought souvenirs from. This type of marketing is able to cast a wider spread net to grab consumers’ attention. Influencers are almost like celebrities to people and consumers try to identify with them. For travel marketers, this creates a new spin on a destination allowing consumers to walk in the shoes of their favorite influencers. Influencers are a great way to help reduce ad fatigue as well as enter large existing communities without any of the extra leg work. Even after you have picked out and chosen a travel destination, marketing is still the guiding hand that leads you to specific choices and decisions about your trip. Platforms such as Google and online travel booking are actively using ads, AI tools, and more to influence your decision making for travel. They highlight different things based on sponsorships, user reviews, and personalized data. For travel marketing, this is a strong resource because it allows brands to use this data for personalization, segmentation, and testing.
When Marketing Works Too Well: Ethics and Overtourism
So, when your vacation is sponsored and marketers use all these resources to get you to that popular travel destination, then what? Is it right for marketers to use these tactics to flood these tourist destinations for the most profit? Overtourism has become a big problem in many popular tourist destinations and exceeding their ability for sustainability, leading to overcrowding, environmental deterioration, and strained infrastructure. “Sustainable travel” compares overtourism to loving a destination to death. Destinations like Thailand, Greece, Venice, and the Dominican Republic have been seeing a rise in tourists of 30 million or more per year. With this many people the wear and tear of famous monuments and tourist areas increase significantly, elevating the cost of refurbishment. The overpopulation of tourism is also decreasing the quality of life for the native people of these areas. Increasing traffic (foot traffic) causes congestion, residents feeling marginalized, and losing their culture due to the unbalanced tourist-to-resident ratio. As much as marketing can help to fill these places with tourists and bring in revenue for communities that may not have seen outreach otherwise, is it still ethical if the result of overtourism is the cultural and physical destruction of these destinations?
Who’s Really Holding The Map?
Overall, travel marketing is much more than the ads on your “for you” page or the sponsors in-between reels or the influencers we follow. Marketing paves the path for our decisions. What begins as a need for a vacation becomes a guided journey influenced by algorithms, AI tools, sponsorships, partnerships, targeting, and much more. These marketing strategies don’t just inspire travel, they discreetly guide and create our dream vacations for us, truly making vacations sponsored.
References
https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/eoik-2021-0015?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://sustainabletravel.org/what-is-overtourism/
https://virtuemarketresearch.com/report/leisure-travel-market
https://business.google.com/us/think/consumer-insights/
AMA University of New Hampshire 
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