Knowing what your customers are doing on your website is not enough to create a targeted travel marketing campaign, Stephen Taylor, Senior Vice president of the Silicon Valley travel science company Sojourn, told audiences at Berlin’s ITB Conference.

“The only thing you can know is what they do on your site,” Taylor said.

“But in their travel consumption they for sure aren’t only looking at you. They look at 20 or 30 other people in a 30-40 day period.”

Data from search engines, competitor sites and OTAs can give a more detailed picture of what they customer is looking for and what pushes them to make the final purchase. 

But Taylor also argues that customers need to know the best point in travel to reach clients.

“The messages they are willing to consume are radically different depending on which stage of travel they are in,” Taylor added.

He broke down the travel cycle into five stages: dreaming, planning and comparing, booking, traveling, returning and sharing.

Video content, native advertising and display advertising is more important in the dreaming, planning and comparing stages, while Facebook data and in-app targeting is more important in the later stages such as traveling, returning and sharing.

“Facebook is really getting its act together on travel data and advertising,” Taylor said.

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