From Bucket Lists to Booking: Closing the Gap Between Social Inspiration and Action

 By Emily Airey, Marketing Executive at Force24

 

 

Where Wanderlust Begins, Tech Must Follow

Inspiration in travel now originates far beyond traditional booking engines.  Those daydreams are beginning with new, by-chance, sparks like a friend’s Facebook album, a video someone tags you in or a screenshotted Instagram ad. But the path from that spark to a confirmed booking can often be too long, littered with movements from within dark social, and filled with unnecessary friction. For travel brands, this “inspiration-action gap” is a golden opportunity to connect, engage and nurture their audience. By using smarter tools that reduce hesitation and accelerate decision-making, you can play a crucial role in turning daydreams into departures.

 

Understanding the Gap

According to a 2024 Expedia Group study, 73% of Gen Z and Millennials say they’re influenced by social media when planning travel, with TikTok and Instagram being the top sources of trip ideas. YouTube is also key: travel vlogs generate over 1 billion monthly views, making them a powerful medium for immersive, sensory-rich storytelling.

Even as social media floods feeds with bucket-list destinations, conversion rates, specifically for travel brands, often remain stubbornly low. Looking at individual platforms, Instagram Ads lead the way with a conversion rate of 7.4%, while Facebook trails at 3.8%, and Snapchat lags behind with just 1.3%.

Why? Because inspiration without a clear next step rarely leads to action. When travel brands leave key details, like pricing, timing, or logistics, buried or hard to find, they shift the research burden onto the audience. These potential customers are already showing interest: saving posts, browsing your feed, and mentally bookmarking destinations. But when crucial information isn’t easily accessible, that momentum can quickly stall.

This is more than a user experience issue. It’s a funnel gap that can be closed with a multi-channel strategy, automation, and personlisation.

 

The travel brands that are taking advantage of these opportunities shifted their strategy to not just meet customers where they are, but to seamlessly pull them through to booking.

This means enabling:

• Social-to-Site Continuity
  Eliminate the drop-off between channels. Tools like deep linking or shoppable video content can carry users directly from social feeds into pre-built booking journeys. If someone sees a reel about Croatia sailing trips, the next click should be a ready-to-book itinerary, not a generic homepage.

• Landing Page Personalisation
  Recognise traffic sources and adapt content accordingly. For example:
  “You saw that video, didn’t you? Get the details on the viral Iceland adventure.”
  Tailoring imagery and language to match the tone and aesthetic of the originating platform reinforces the sensory experience and maintains momentum.

This social-first approach mirrors how consumers experience content: visually rich, emotionally charged, and often short-form. By bridging inspiration and conversion through personalised, sensory-aligned journeys, brands can intercept purchase intent at its most potent moment.

Wander, the app, is a perfect example of a brand bridging the gap between inspiration and action. Their platform transforms Instagram posts into mapped itineraries, allowing users to instantly turn visual content into bookable, real-world experiences. It’s a socially native approach that reflects how modern consumers discover and plan travel.

And while stitching together platforms like Instagram, TikTok, email, and booking systems might seem daunting, tools like Force24’s new “Apps in Journeys” feature make that integration far more achievable. It allows marketers to automate cross-channel actions -so when the spark is lit on social, it can trigger timely, personalised follow-up across the rest of the journey.

 

Tech-Enabled Tools to Bridge the Gap

Once you’ve captured someone’s imagination, the next step is making it effortless for them to move from thinking about travel to booking it. This is where tech and automation work together and plays a crucial role, not just in functionality, but in psychology. The goal is to smooth the journey from inspiration to commitment.

Here’s how travel tech firms can help close that gap:

• Interactive Trip Builders
  Let users explore ideas without the pressure to commit. Whether it’s dragging and dropping destinations onto a map or saving activities to a wish list, these tools turn passive interest into active planning. With automation, saved preferences can trigger personalised follow-ups, such as emails that revisit their wish list or highlight similar trips, keeping their journey alive even after they leave your site.

• Predictive Price Tools
  Real-time fare tracking, and price alerts give travellers confidence that they’re booking at the right moment. Automation ensures timely notifications based on user behaviour, such as a wishlist item dropping in price, helping nudge them toward action without them having to keep checking back.

• Embedded Booking in Content
  Allow users to book directly from within blogs, destination guides, or influencer posts, no redirects, no delays. Combined with automation, this creates a responsive content journey where actions like reading a blog or watching a video can automatically trigger relevant offers or reminders tailored to what inspired them in the first place.

 

Reducing the Psychological Distance to Booking

Booking a holiday is an emotional commitment. It often feels like a big leap, especially for higher-ticket trips or group travel. But small, incremental actions can build confidence and tip users over the line. Travel tech should prioritise conversion features that reduce friction and decision fatigue:

• Save-for-later options so ideas don’t vanish after a single session
• Calendar syncing to help visualise travel dates in real life
• Group planning tools that let friends/family weigh in before confirming
• Flexible payment options like “book now, pay later” to ease financial pressure

All of the above lower the cognitive load, reduce hesitation, and make the final step feel less like a jump and more like a natural next move.

 

Turning Inspiration into Itineraries

The gap between dreaming of a destination and actually booking it isn’t just a quirk of modern consumer behaviour – it’s a strategic challenge, and an enormous opportunity. As social media continues to spark intent and redefine how people discover the world, the role of travel tech is no longer just operational – it’s inspirational.

B2B travel tech firms have a clear path forward: design tools and systems that honour the spontaneity of inspiration, reduce friction in planning, and make conversion feel effortless. Whether it’s through social-personalised landing pages, predictive pricing alerts, or embedded booking within content, the future belongs to platforms that blur the line between dreaming and doing.

By addressing both the emotional and functional barriers to booking and building seamless bridges between platforms, providers can help ensure that more travel dreams don’t just stay in the feed, they make it to the calendar.

Because in today’s landscape, the brands that succeed won’t be the loudest they’ll be the ones that quietly remove the barriers in the way.