What travel marketers can learn from the journey between interest and booking

By James Skellington, Head of Strategic New Business at Force24 

Travel buyers do not move neatly from interest to booking anymore, and most marketers know that instinctively, even if their systems still do not reflect it. Your customer might browse a destination one day, compare prices a few days later, request a quote the following week, disappear for a while, then come back through an email, a paid ad or a direct visit and finally book after several moments that, on paper, can look completely disconnected. 

In reality, they are not disconnected at all. They are part of one decision-making journey, and, for travel brands, the challenge is being able to see that journey clearly enough to respond to it properly. That was really the heart of our recent webinar with Traveltek, whose booking and reservation technology supports travel brands in managing everything from supplier connectivity and customer enquiries to online bookings and quoting journeys. Together, we explored what is actually happening in travel right now, where brands are losing visibility, and why so much of the commercial opportunity sits in the space between first interest and final booking.  

For a lot of travel marketers, the issue is not a lack of activity. There is traffic coming in, campaigns going out, quotes being generated, and bookings being made. The problem is that too much of that activity sits in separate places. Marketing performance lives in one system, booking data lives somewhere else, sales conversations happen elsewhere again, and somewhere in the middle of all that, the buyer is expected to move smoothly from curiosity to conversion. When those systems are not connected, teams are left making assumptions about what is driving bookings, which signals matter, and where valuable intent is going cold. 

That matters even more at this point in the year. Once the peak has passed, the conversation tends to shift. The pressure is no longer just about generating demand. It becomes about sustaining it, converting the people who are still weighing things up, and building momentum into summer and the shoulder season beyond. 

This is usually the point where sharper follow-up, better visibility and better-timed communication can make a measurable difference, because the volume might feel steadier but the opportunities are still there for the teams who can spot them. 

One of the strongest points in the webinar was that a huge part of the buying journey happens before an enquiry is ever made. By the time someone fills out a form, asks for a quote or picks up the phone, they have often already told you quite a lot through their behaviour. They have searched, compared, dropped off, come back, looked at the same trip more than once, maybe downloaded a brochure or spent time on a particular product page. 

All of that is intent, but unless your setup allows you to connect those signals, it is very easy to miss what is building in front of you. 

That is why connected data matters so much in travel marketing. Not because it sounds good in a strategy deck, but because it gives you a far clearer view of what is actually influencing bookings. It helps you understand what people are looking at, where they are hesitating, which quotes need following up, which enquiries are warm, and which parts of the journey are creating friction when they should be building confidence. 

Without that joined-up view, marketing can become reactive very quickly, and sales teams are often left trying to close opportunities without enough context around what the buyer has already done. 

The website is a good example of this. Travel brands invest heavily in getting people there, but once a buyer arrives, the website has to do much more than look polished. It has to help people move forward. 

That means making it easy to search, easy to compare, easy to understand what is actually being offered and easy to act when the time feels right. If navigation feels clunky, if the content is weak, if the pricing shifts awkwardly through the journey or if the quote experience feels like an afterthought, confidence starts to wobble. 

In travel, that wobble matters, because people are not just buying a product. They are trying to picture a real experience, often at a meaningful price point, and any uncertainty in the journey can slow them down or push them elsewhere. 

Quotes are especially important here. For more complex bookings, the quote is more than an admin step but can also be a sales tool. It is often the thing that helps turn vague interest into a more serious decision, which means the quality of that experience matters far more than many brands realise. 

If the quote looks good, feels clear and can be tracked properly, it gives sales and marketing something much stronger to work with. If it disappears into the void with no visibility on whether it was opened, revisited or ignored, then another valuable signal is lost. 

The same challenge shows up in email, which still plays a huge role in travel marketing but is becoming harder to rely on when it is treated as a broadcast channel rather than part of the wider customer experience. 

As we explored during the session, email remains one of the most-used channels in marketing and, at the same time, one of the most underutilised when it comes to understanding buyer intent, engagement and deliverability as standards continue to evolve. Too many brands are still operating with the mindset of “send everyone everything and hope they find something they like”, expecting the email itself to do all the selling. 

That approach is becoming much harder to sustain. 

“In a world where attention is already in short supply, it’s a bit like putting every offer you have onto a billboard and saying ‘job done’,” James explained during the webinar. “Travel prides itself on the quality of its experiences, the destinations, the consultants, the tailored moments people are investing in. Yet for most of the year, the communication buyers receive from travel brands can still feel incredibly generic.” 

That disconnect matters more than many brands realise. Travel companies invest heavily in creating personalised experiences once somebody is engaged with a consultant or actively planning a trip, but the communication surrounding those moments often fails to reflect the same level of relevance or care. 

The result is that email becomes noisy rather than useful, especially at a time when inbox providers like Google and Microsoft are becoming far stricter about engagement and sender quality. 

For years, many brands could rely on volume to drive results. Build the campaign, send it broadly and trust that enough people would respond. Now, buyers are more selective, inboxes are more crowded and deliverability itself has become part of performance. 

What that means in practice is that sending more does not automatically create more opportunity. In fact, repeatedly emailing disengaged audiences can quietly damage future results because the cost is not just wasted sends. It affects inbox placement, audience trust and the long-term visibility of future campaigns too. 

The stronger approach is to think less about how many campaigns can be sent and more about whether the message genuinely reflects where somebody is in their journey. 

A family browsing school holiday option should not be receiving the same communication as somebody reviewing an adult-only cruise quote. A customer close to departure needs something completely different from someone still deciding whether to book at all. And somebody returning from a holiday is often in a very different mindset again, sometimes more open to reviews, referrals or even planning the next trip sooner than brands expect. 

That is where personalisation starts to mean something more valuable than simply inserting a first name into a subject line. It becomes about using data to make communication feel properly timed, relevant, and connected to the wider experience the brand is trying to create. 

That post-booking period is one of the areas travel brands often underuse. It is easy to treat the booking as the finish line, but from a marketing perspective it is really just the point where the buyer’s needs change. 

Before departure, they may need reassurance, useful prompts, upgrades, extras or practical information that makes the trip feel more real and better supported. Once they return, there is a genuine opportunity to continue the conversation while the experience is still fresh. 

Too often, though, that window passes because nobody has the visibility or automation in place to act on it at the right time. 

What came through clearly in the webinar was that the brands in the strongest position are not necessarily the ones doing the most. They are the ones with the clearest line of sight. They can see where intent is building, where the journey is stalling, what messages are helping, and what moments deserve something more tailored than a generic campaign. 

They are not relying on disconnected snapshots from different platforms and trying to stitch the story together afterwards. They are working from a more connected picture of the buyer, which makes it much easier to respond in a way that feels timely and commercially smart. 

For travel marketers, that is the opportunity now. Not just to drive more traffic or send more messages, but to make better use of the signals already in front of them. 

Because the connected travel buyers are moving across channels, devices and decisions in ways that do not fit a clean funnel. The question is whether your setup helps you understand that behaviour well enough to do something useful with it. 

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