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ESTO Tales: Millennials, Data and Why Travel Rocks!

September 07, 2016

With the backdrop of the beautiful Boca Raton Resort & Club, showcasing Discover The Palm Beaches and Travel Florida, more than 700 travel professionals came together last week to learn, celebrate and mingle during the annual ESTO Conference. Hosted by the U.S. Travel Association, ESTO is the place to share knowledge, data and techniques specifically designed for travel and tourism organizations.

ESTO professionals at the 2016 Conference

MBuy attended for the second year and spent a valuable few days learning about current trends in the travel world including:

Travel Is Important

  • Travel is the largest industry in the world- what we are doing makes a difference!
  • People are happy before, during and after they travel.  Specifically for the eight weeks leading into their trip, there is a sense of excitement about their upcoming adventure.
  • Over 50% of people do not take their entire allotted vacation time.  This is especially prevalent in the millennial age group.

Millennials Love to Travel

  • Millennials are frequent travelers, but have very different behaviors and desires in travel versus older generations.
  • 48% of Millennials have taken a last-minute vacation, planning with six days or fewer before departure.
  • The internet and social media are predominant factors in their lifestyles, averaging over four hours of personal use on the internet and over two hours on social media sites per day.

Embrace Technology

  • The average household has between 11-12 devices, meaning you can no longer focus on one or two devices to reach a target audience
  • Virtual reality & 360 video has slowly started to make its way mainstream. To see a creative example of how travel advertisers are using VR, check out National Geographic’s exploration of Yosemite.

Data, Data, Data

  • Data is a friend, not a foe.  Data can help increase budgets, justify media channels, and show stakeholders the impact of travel campaigns and budgets.
  • Data is also a great way to keep your agency in check…for more on this and the panel that MBuy was on with our partner Discover Los Angeles, check back next week!