Something interesting is happening in travel marketing that almost nobody talks about at the big industry conferences. While every panel keeps discussing Meta ad optimisation, Google Performance Max, or the next AI-powered bidding tool, a growing group of the most successful tourism boards and hotel groups are quietly doing the opposite. They’re moving budget away from the big platforms — and into channels they own themselves. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s math!
The last decade of travel marketing was built on one core assumption: that reach is best rented from Google and Meta, and that clever targeting will always outperform clever content. For a while, that was true. Cost per click was low, targeting was rich, and any competent agency could deliver measurable ROI within a quarter. Those days are gone. And smart travel brands are adjusting.
1. The economics of paid channels have flipped
Between 2015 and 2020, the average cost per click for travel-related keywords on Google in the Dutch and Belgian market roughly tripled. On Meta, the story is worse: click-through rates on hotel and destination ads have fallen from around 2 % to well below 1 %, while cost per thousand impressions has climbed 40 % or more. Meanwhile, the alternatives — owned content platforms, editorial partnerships, newsletter placements — have stayed remarkably stable in price. What was expensive in 2015 is now cheap. What was cheap in 2015 is now expensive. The travel brands that noticed this shift early are the ones with the healthiest marketing P&Ls today.
2. First-party data beats third-party data every time
Since Apple’s iOS 14.5 tracking prompt and Google’s ongoing cookie deprecation, the value of third-party data has collapsed. Retargeting audiences that used to convert at 3 % now convert at 0.8 %. Look-alike models built on Facebook’s shrinking data set produce increasingly unreliable results.
The travel brands that invested in their own newsletter lists, their own booking-history data, and their own on-site personalisation are now sitting on assets that are literally 5 to 10 times more valuable per contact than a rented audience segment. And that value is only going up as third-party data continues to erode. For a destination or hotel group, this shifts the question. It’s no longer “how do we buy more reach?” but “how do we build more of our own?”
3. Newsletters are the most underrated channel in travel
Here’s a stat that surprises most marketers: a well-targeted travel newsletter placement in the Dutch and Belgian market delivers open rates between 35 and 50 %, click-through rates of 4 to 8 %, and downstream conversion rates that put every other channel to shame. Compare that to Meta feed ads at 0.6 % CTR and 30 % viewability, and it’s clear where the actual opportunity lies. Yet most media plans still allocate ten times more budget to social than to newsletters. Part of it is habit. Part of it is that newsletter placements can’t be bought self-service through an agency dashboard — you actually need a relationship with the publisher. But that friction is exactly why the channel keeps performing. Scarcity protects the format.
4. Editorial partnerships are the new brand campaigns
There’s a reason luxury hotel groups have started producing long-form editorial content in partnership with specialist travel publishers rather than running yet another Instagram carousel. A well-crafted 1,500-word article on a specialist platform lives in Google search results for years, gets shared organically, and delivers a fundamentally different quality of visitor than a paid click. Yes, the upfront cost is higher. A native article can cost 5 to 10 times as much as an equivalent Meta buy. But the half-life is 10 to 20 times longer, and the intent quality of the reader is on a different level. For destinations that think in seasons rather than in quarters, this trade-off is obvious. For agencies that report on monthly click metrics, it’s less so — which is one reason it’s still relatively underexploited.
5. Owned content is the ultimate compounding asset
Every article a destination publishes on its own site, every video it uploads to its own YouTube channel, every newsletter it sends — these are assets that keep working for years. Every Google ad, Meta post or programmatic banner is a rental that stops the moment the budget stops. The travel brands that treat marketing as asset-building rather than as ongoing rental payments are the ones compounding value. Ten years of consistent owned content produces a moat that no competitor can replicate quickly, no matter how much media budget they throw at the problem. The classic banner ad, by contrast, produces nothing that outlives the campaign flight.
Where a specialist agency comes in
None of this means brands should fire their media agencies. Paid channels still have a role — especially for retargeting warm audiences and for filling short-term booking gaps.
But the mix is shifting. And the agencies that will thrive in this next decade of travel marketing are the ones that can help brands build their own channels, not just rent someone else’s. That means editorial planning, newsletter strategy, owned platform partnerships, and long-term content asset development — alongside the paid buys.
At Spalder Media Group, that has been the thesis from day one. We own the platforms travellers actually use in the Dutch and Belgian market (Snowplaza, Skiinformatie, Wintersportlive). We publish daily editorial content that ranks in Google for years. Our newsletters reach hundreds of thousands of pre-qualified travellers. And we help destinations and hotel groups build their own owned assets alongside, so they compound value in the long term rather than starting from zero every campaign cycle.
The take-away
If your current travel marketing spend is 90 % Google and Meta, and you can’t remember the last time you looked at newsletter data or owned-content performance, you’re probably overpaying for reach and underinvesting in value. The good news: the shift back to owned channels doesn’t require a revolution. It requires reallocating maybe 20 to 30 % of your current media budget over the next 12 months. The brands that make that move now — while the big platforms are still expensive and the specialists are still relatively uncrowded — will look, in three years, like they saw something everyone else missed.
Because in travel marketing, the future doesn’t belong to the biggest buyer. It belongs to the smartest owner.