Lead generation best practices for travel advertisers
Create demand with high‑quality potential travelers and nurture those relationships to drive bookings and repeat customers.
Common lead generation challenges
- Seasonality: Demand spikes around holidays, summer, and events — requiring adaptive budgets and messaging.
- Audience targeting: Matching offers to family, couples, solo travelers, and loyalty members with personalized messages.
- Lead nurturing: Travelers research across multiple touchpoints before booking; follow‑ups must be timely and helpful.
- Trust building: Encourage repeat bookings with consistent value, clear policies, and transparent offers.
The four pillars of travel lead generation
Create demand with engaging visuals and frictionless forms across destinations and experiences.
Identify buyers most likely to book using timing, trip type, party size, and budget intent.
Re‑engage with itineraries, perks, price drops, and helpful reminders across channels.
Sync to CRM, route to consultants/agents, and track bookings and repeat visits.
Generate leads across multiple conversion locations
Instant forms
Mobile‑first, quick‑loading forms that auto‑populate fields and showcase destination highlights, packages, and perks.
Website forms
Send travelers to full itinerary or property pages, then collect details after research and price comparison.
Tip: Running both increases reach and lowers cost per qualified inquiry.
Optimize acquisition with automation and AI
Smart Targeting
Find people likely in‑market based on behavior, browsing, and travel interests.
Creative Optimizer
Auto‑test images, videos, and copy that highlight destinations, ships, resorts, and bundles.
Placements+
Automatically deliver to cost‑efficient placements across feeds, video, and messaging surfaces.
Travel Catalog Ads
Promote destinations, cabins, properties, and packages from a single creative source.
- Enable Smart Targeting with broad destination and trip types.
- Launch 1–2 evergreen creatives per product line (cruise, hotel, tour).
- Run instant and website forms in parallel.
- Add video assets to catalog creative for richer storytelling.
- Adopt single‑step automation features as constraints allow.
- Expand placements once CPL stabilizes.
Diversify with a secondary conversion option
Instant form + Messaging optimization
Let the system choose between form or chat based on traveler preference; continue the conversation in‑thread for quotes and bespoke trips.
Website + add‑ons
Layer an instant form or call add‑on onto itinerary/property pages to capture ready‑to‑book travelers.
Invest in your first‑party data strategy
eFind CRM Sync
Share lower‑funnel outcomes (qualified, appointment set, booked) from your CRM to improve optimization for quality.
Web Conversion Engine
Share server‑side web events (quote start, itinerary save, booking start) alongside client‑side signals to maximize coverage of key actions.
Adjust the customer experience to drive different outcomes
Instant form customization
- Form type: Choose more volume or higher intent (with a review step).
- Rich creative: Add brand colors, about, and highlights like destinations and perks.
- Gated content: Incentivize with exclusive offers, loyalty points, or early‑bird deals after submit.
Conditional logic
- Qualify by trip timing, destination type (beach, alpine, culinary), and party type (family, couples, solo).
- Ask proxy questions to identify budget and cabin/room preferences without collecting sensitive data.
- Recommend best‑fit itineraries on the confirmation screen.
Follow up with new leads quickly and clearly
Branded Calling
Display your travel brand and logo on call screens to increase answer rates and reduce spam concerns.
Messaging follow‑ups
Re‑engage leads in the same thread with quotes, FAQs, documents, and reminders.
Operationalize lead management tasks
CRM integrations
Connect Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho or use workflow tools like Zapier/LeadsBridge/Make.
Google Sheets sync
Auto‑sync new instant‑form leads into a shared sheet for smaller teams.
Leads Center
Manage, track, and re‑engage leads without a full CRM; apply tags and reminders.
Travel campaign setup overview
Conversion locations
- Instant forms
- Instant forms + Messaging (destination optimization)
- Website forms
- Website + instant form add‑on
- Website + call add‑on
Automation and AI
- Smart Targeting
- Creative Optimizer
- Placements+
- Travel Catalog Ads
Data and goals
- CRM Sync + Web Conversion Engine
- Optimize for Leads and Conversion Leads
- Test instant vs website vs hybrid setups
