Travel brands should recognise value of out-of-home advertising

Last summer, 32.3 million people took a domestic overnight trip in the UK, with 94% of these visits taking place outside London. Adults who took a domestic trip spent an estimated £11bn.

 

The scale of this market extends well beyond the capital: 84% of domestic overnight tourism spend outside London amounts to £28bn.

 

This appetite for travel and leisure comes despite the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, with the British public increasingly choosing to spend its disposable income on experiences rather than new possessions. Virgin Money customer spending data also showed £1.9bn spent across eating out, takeaways, clothing and travel during summer 2025, a 15% year-on-year increase, underlining the continued appetite for lifestyle and leisure experiences.

 

Those numbers represent more than a healthy domestic tourism market. They represent millions of individual decisions about where to go, where to eat, what to see and what to spend money on. 

 

Travel marketers have spent years targeting people based on who they are and where they live. The challenge now is to reach them when it’s genuinely useful, especially when they are making decisions.

 

Connecting with these consumers starts with understanding who they are. This is important because, in the mind of the consumer, the holiday doesn’t begin when they check into their accommodation; it begins much earlier – when someone first starts dreaming about their next adventure, then booking the trip, and this continues throughout the actual journey itself.

 

Think about your own last leisure trip. The journey probably wasn’t a straight line from home to the destination. There may have been a coffee before the train, a decision about where to eat on arrival, time to fill before checking into accommodation or a spontaneous choice about what to do that evening. 

 

The journey is part of the holiday experience

 

A lot can happen between leaving home and arriving at your travel destination. Travel is a sequence of decisions, many of which happen when people are already on the move.

 

A family driving to the coast might wonder where to stop for lunch. A couple heading on a city break might search for entertainment in the evening. A change in the weather might spark fresh interest in a particular outdoor attraction. 

 

Alongside booking confirmation emails, digital retargeting and the traditional pre-trip media plan, travel brands can think beyond this. Where are consumers physically moving? What environments are they passing through? What are they likely to be thinking about when they get there?

 

When people are travelling for leisure, they often spend less time looking at screens. In this context, major roads, service stations, transport hubs, town centres and seaside destinations become important parts of the media landscape, often in the form of out-of-home advertising (OOH).

 

As part of the environment consumers are already moving through, OOH can become a built-in feature of the journey. This context, crucially, allows OOH to play a role in the traveller’s decision-making process. 

 

That insight can then shape both media planning and creative. A message at a roadside location can respond to the needs of people on the move, and a screen near a transport hub can speak to arriving visitors. OOH also gives brands greater flexibility to tailor messaging to different locations, times, and conditions, helping creative feel more connected to the moment it is seen.

 

Category entry points

 

Demographics still matter, of course, and you can build insights from first-party customer data, existing audience research, consumer panels and bespoke qualitative and quantitative research. But knowing someone is a parent aged 35–44 tells you far less than knowing they’re currently travelling with two children, approaching a seaside town and looking for something to do before their 3pm hotel check-in.

 

Identifying these ‘category entry points’ matters because consumer behaviour changes greatly with context. The same demographic profile can have completely different needs depending on their situation.

 

Travel marketers must understand these moments create opportunities to connect different parts of the travel economy. A destination can promote an attraction, an attraction can promote a nearby restaurant and so on. The journey itself becomes a connected media ecosystem.

 

Relevance will win the journey

 

In 2026, the most effective marketing isn’t the loudest; it’s the most relevant. Travel brands should focus on enhancing the journey by being timely and visible when consumers are actively making decisions.

 

As competition for domestic tourism continues, winning attention will increasingly depend on showing up in the right place, at the right moment, with something genuinely useful to share.

 

Travel brands that understand where travellers are, what they need and what decision they are about to make can use OOH to capture attention when it matters most.