As you probably already know, social media works really in the travel industry. As the largest social advertising platform with a reach of over 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook should be forming an integral part of your social advertising strategy.
Facebook's advertising platform is really intuitive which makes setting up an ad fairly easy, even for a first timer. However, getting an ad to perform according to your desired outcomes is a much greater challenge. In this post, we will take a look at a few Facebook ad examples for travel companies and highlight the key attributes that made them a success.
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The first of our travel Facebook ad examples is TourRadar, a well-known online travel marketplace that specializes in multi-day tour group offerings. To boost conversions on their website they set up a campaign using Facebook travel ads and destination ads.
The campaign was a great success, and over a twelve-month period they doubled their conversion rate and halved their cost per booking. Additionally, they reached over 1.2 million people with relevant ads every month.
How did they do it? They used carousel ads which provided tour headlines, gave prices, showed destination images, mentioned discounts, and had a call to action to showcase their tours to interested travelers who had browsed online but not booked.
To pack more punch, they also set up destination ads which used relevant images and product information to target people who had shown interest online in a destination. The goal here was to entice them to visit the TourRadar website. These ads were also directed to people who had viewed specific tours on their own website.
TourRadar targeted travelers who had already shown interest in a particular tour or destination with key information curated into one visually appealing ad. As a result of using their own first party data which they passed onto Facebook, they were able to fulfill the objectives of the campaign.
Next on our list of success stories is Trentino Marketing. This public tourist board wanted to develop tourism in the very scenic Trentino in Italy. We’ve included them as one of our Facebook ad examples to show how they managed to raise awareness and reach new markets for the destination.
Their four-month Facebook advertising campaign saw a 4.2X year-on-year increase in holiday offers viewed, resulted in an 18.4% increase in organic search traffic on brand keywords after the campaign, and reached 13 million people across Europe and the US in that timeframe. Additionally, 1.5 million people viewed their videos adverts in full, indicating their relevance to the target group.
All of this was achieved using canvas with video ads and the carousel format. Canvas is an interactive media experience ad which encourages viewers to interact with it by swiping and clicking around to see it.
To kick off the campaign and grab travelers attention, Trentino used short eye-catching videos which encapsulated the scenery of the destination.
Next, they progressed to retargeting carousel ads to travelers who had either watched the video for a certain amount of time or who had clicked through to their website. These ads showcased the four different types of holidays travelers could to choose from.
Lastly, they set up five different travel Facebook ad examples in three different languages to take the final step and push conversions.
Ultimately the combination of ad formats captured travelers attention and drove people to the Trentino Marketing website. Furthermore, they helped raise the visibility of both the company as well as the destination on search engines.
As one of the best Facebook ad examples showcasing how dynamic ads for travel can be successfully used to target a broad audience and find new customers, we have selected Melia Hotels International success story.
The Spanish Hotel chain wanted to target new customers in the UK and drive down the cost per booking compared to their previous UK ad campaigns.
This time they managed to secure a 3.2X lower cost per booking, as well as a 2.8X higher return on ad spend compared to previous campaigns.
Melia Hotels had previously used dynamic ads for travel and been successful with it. However, they wanted to find a way to continuously draw-in new customers from around the world. This led them to try out the ad format using a broad audience target.
They ran their dynamic ads for travel with a broad audience target for one month and delivered them to people in the UK who had travel plans to a specific destination. The ads were customized to each individual, displaying a hotel in a specific destination that was likely to suit their needs.
After the trial run had achieved impressive results, Melia setup similar campaigns to run for all of its’ global markets. The very relevant and personally tailored experience that these Facebook ad examples delivered to their target audience made the campaign a huge success for the company.
Now we will take a look at an example of how Facebook ads for travel companies generated interest in El Al's flight fares and improved their click-through rate over a period of five months.
The Israeli airline wanted to promote special fares and new routes, as well as increase flight searches on its’ website. Ultimately they achieved 5X more flight searches, had a 25% higher click-through rate, and 50% lower cost per flight search than previous campaigns using Facebook ad examples.
Using Facebook ads for retargeting with a website conversion ad objective, Fialkov Digital put together a campaign that saw El Al retarget travelers who had browsed flights within the last 21 days but not yet booked. The campaign featured ads showing the exact routes people had searched, and appeared across Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, they linked to flight auction site bid2fly to give travelers an even more attractive incentive to book.
Because the Facebook pixel gives you the power to target a highly relevant audience, El Al was able to match their product with interested travelers. With a prominent CTA, their click-through rate shot up and their website views increased greatly.
To end off our list of Facebook ad examples that travel companies have successfully used to promote their business, we will examine a case study on Travel Department. This holiday company wanted to try out a new way of advertising, as well as boost awareness and sales.
They too worked with an agency, Wolfgang Digital. A three-phase campaign was put together and run for three months. Their video ads saw a 27X return on spend, the dynamic and slideshow ads saw a 30X return, while the dynamic ads saw a 131X return.
To start with, they used video ads to showcase the stunning destinations and describe their expert services.
In the second phase, they retargeted carousel and slideshow ads to people who had interacted with videos from phase one of the campaign. Carousel ads allowed them to showcase up to ten destinations in one space, and the slideshow ads have almost the same effect of video ads without the related costs.
In the final phase, they used dynamic ads with the Facebook pixel to retarget travelers who had viewed products on the site or added to their basket without completing checkout.
Again, the various ad formats provided Travel Department with the opportunity to reach a wide audience. They were then able to narrow their audience down to those who expressed interest in their product and successfully target them with relevant ads.