Editorial
eBook
Web Marketing Moneyball: How Web Operations Drive Marketing ROI
The Gist
- Why should non-travel brands care about traveler audiences? A booked trip is one of the strongest purchase signals a consumer sends — 62% of travelers make non-travel purchases during their trip, averaging $670 in the U.S.
- Which categories have the most to gain? Apparel, beauty, electronics and financial services all see measurable pre- and post-trip spend, yet most brands in these categories aren't showing up in travel environments.
- What should marketers do differently? Shift budget into travel media, build cross-channel triggers around trip data, and extend retention programs past the welcome-home email to capture the post-trip purchase loop.
Most brands treat travel data as somebody else's category. Unless you sell flights or hotel rooms, it lives on a different brand’s dashboards, or in a different agency's deck.
A new Expedia Group study with The Harris Poll, surveying 3,500 travel decision-makers, suggests that's a mistake. Booking a trip is one of the strongest purchase signals a consumer sends, yet most enterprise brands are doing nothing with it.
Globally, 62% of travelers make a non-travel-related purchase during their trip. In the U.S., this figure rises to 64%, with an average trip generating $670 in non-travel spend, compared with a $500 global average. The purchase window opens before the packing even begins, and with most brands not even showing up, this is a big opportunity for the brands that take the first step.
Table of Contents
- Why a Booked Trip Is One of the Strongest Purchase Signals a Consumer Sends
- How to Build a Cross-Channel Campaign Around the Travel Moment
- Why Last-Click Attribution Fails Travelers — and How to Fix It
- The Post-Trip Loop: Why Retention Doesn't End at the Welcome-Home Email
- Frequently Asked Questions: Travel Audiences and Non-Travel Marketing
- The Immediate Opportunity for Brands Willing to Act
Why a Booked Trip Is One of the Strongest Purchase Signals a Consumer Sends
Audience targeting tends to be focused and often reactionary. If a consumer searches for headphones, the brand bids on headphones. While this approach is logical and has worked for years, it is becoming more expensive each quarter to keep up with the competition.
The Expedia data points somewhere else. A booked flight predicts spending in retail, beauty, electronics and financial services. Trip planners are buying clothes (75% of U.S. travelers versus 70% globally) and packaged food and drinks (43% vs. 37%). They're doing the research on large marketplaces at materially higher rates than the rest of the world: 56% versus 48% for ideas, and 48% versus 38% for purchases.
"The data is clear: marketing leaders shouldn't view travel as a narrow, point-in-time purchase exclusive to booking," says Jennifer Andre, vice president of sales at Expedia Group Advertising. "The reality is that travel sparks a cycle where consumers research and buy before, during and after trips. Marketers who plan with this in mind will have stronger reach with high-intent travelers and ultimately will create more connected campaigns that influence purchase behavior beyond just travel."
4 Moves for the Next Planning Cycle
- Shift spend into travel environments. Travelers say ads inside these contexts actually help them — they're already in shopping mode.
- Lean harder into Gen Z. 75% make non-travel purchases for their trips, the highest of any segment.
- Luxury should be where travelers are. 73% of consumers learn about new luxury brands while traveling. U.S. travelers are learning about them at retail stores at their destination (62%), social and influencer content (34%) and restaurants/bars (33%), all significantly higher than the global average.
- Move financial services into the planning moment. It's one of the rare times a consumer voluntarily rethinks how they pay for things.
How to Build a Cross-Channel Campaign Around the Travel Moment
Strategy decks have a way of running into the org chart and breaking. A multi-stage buying journey can't be served by teams that sync once a quarter. I've watched strong plans collapse in handoff because nobody owned the space between channels.
Imagine a consumer electronics brand advertising new noise-canceling headphones. Inventory books via travel platforms instead of throwing every dollar into the same overheated keyword auction. Creative is built around assets that show the product in use: an airport seat jammed with other passengers, a laptop pulled out at midnight in a hotel room. Lifecycle sends an email triggered by a travel partner data sync that identifies an international flight booked on the calendar. Acquisition includes a lookalike of recent travelers. Taken alone, none of these tactics is unique. String them together, and you have a campaign that knows what it's doing.
The pre-trip categories are likely no surprise: apparel and accessories, beauty and personal care, travel gear, and electronics. The motivations are unusually clean. Sixty percent of U.S. travelers buy these things to make the trip easier. Fifty-six percent because they want to look good and feel confident while they're away. Those are useful emotional inputs for the creative brief.
Related Article: End of the Price Game: What Marketers Must Do Next
Why Last-Click Attribution Fails Travelers — and How to Fix It
Another aspect that can prohibit many brands from taking action on this audience comes down to reporting. While last-click attribution often yields a defensible number, it is not appropriate for a customer journey that spans travel platforms, marketplaces and post-trip retargeting. Because travel purchases don’t often fall within a single channel's reporting view, they can pose challenges before the strategy even gets off the ground.
Marketing teams can make three important adjustments to the measurement frame to account for this:
- Factor in the post-trip loop. 72% of travelers make at least one purchase upon returning home. Spend doesn't evaporate at takeoff.
- Look past the last click. The research shows that consumers find non-travel ads on travel sites helpful. Remembering to buy something they forgot, saving on something they were going to buy anyway and discovering premium brands they otherwise wouldn’t have known about is an overlooked opportunity. That value bets paid back eventually, even if it wasn’t the last touch.
- Run incrementality tests. Optimizing on ROAS reporting alone will reinforce optimizing toward attribution artifacts. Eliminating holdouts is the antidote. Run tests this year.
This multi-tactic approach shows how leveraging the strong intent signal of a booked trip—from media placement on travel platforms to lifecycle triggers—creates a connected campaign. By integrating these elements, a brand can efficiently reach high-intent buyers and move beyond the expense of narrow keyword targeting.
Non-Travel Spending by Traveler Segment: What the Expedia Group Data Shows
Editor's note: This table maps key traveler segments and purchase behaviors from the Expedia Group/Harris Poll study to help marketers prioritize targeting and creative strategy.
| Traveler Segment or Behavior | U.S. Finding | Implication for Marketers |
|---|---|---|
| Non-travel purchases during a trip | 64% of U.S. travelers; avg. $670 per trip | Travel audiences are active buyers, not just travel buyers |
| Gen Z travelers | 75% make non-travel purchases for their trips | Highest-intent segment; prioritize in travel environment buys |
| Apparel purchases | 75% of U.S. travelers vs. 70% globally | Pre-trip apparel spend is a reliable, scalable trigger category |
| Luxury brand discovery | 73% learn about new luxury brands while traveling | Travel context accelerates luxury consideration; shift media accordingly |
| Post-trip purchases | 72% make at least one purchase after returning home | Retention and retargeting windows extend well past the trip itself |
The Post-Trip Loop: Why Retention Doesn't End at the Welcome-Home Email
Finally, there are two important payment-related trends to get ahead of.
- First, post-trip commerce is real and growing. Travelers are buying foods and drinks online that they encountered abroad, and they're going back to brands they discovered on the trip. If your retention program stops at the welcome-home email, you're missing the second act.
- Second, checkout is fragmenting. Travelers are unusually willing to switch financial providers around a trip, and the four major payment paths — debit or bank transfer, credit paid off right away, credit carrying a balance and buy-now-pay-later — are running roughly evenly across the segment. If your checkout assumes one default, you're losing transactions you already earned.
Travelers are a sought-after segment for DTC commerce because they’re repeat buyers of brands they discovered while traveling and products they found while abroad. For this reason, customer loyalty programs ending with a welcome-home email aren’t cutting it. Brands also need to ensure they aren’t losing those hard-won transactions by supporting the fragmentation of the checkout process, including four big payment journeys (debit, pay-now credit, balance-carrying credit, and BNPL).
Frequently Asked Questions: Travel Audiences and Non-Travel Marketing
Editor's note: These questions reflect what enterprise marketing and CX leaders are asking as travel-intent data enters brand planning conversations.
The Immediate Opportunity for Brands Willing to Act
While a focus on new models to solve attribution and create greater personalization is worthwhile, there are immediate opportunities for brands willing to act on the behavior signals already in front of them.
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So, back to the original question: are you ignoring your highest-intent buyers because you’ve written them off as someone else’s customer? Don’t wait until they return from their trip, as there is plenty of opportunity before they are back home.
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