| October 11, 2021
Why travel marketers are turning to OOH for scalable reach and ROI
Tourism is thriving once again, and brands are racing to capture the attention of today’s travellers. As the industry continues to rebound and evolve from its pandemic dip, marketers are rethinking how to connect with multiple generations at key moments in the travel journey. Out-of-home (OOH) advertising remains a powerful, performance-driven medium, valued not only for its visual impact but also for its ability to deliver cost efficiency and broad market penetration across both global and local campaigns.
For travel marketers, OOH offers strategic ways to engage audiences in real time. From digital billboards near airports to transit ads and dynamic creative triggered by weather or location, the channel excels at reaching travellers on the move or those dreaming of their next escape.
With its focus on visual storytelling and contextual relevance, OOH is especially effective at sparking wanderlust, promoting destinations, and influencing travel decisions. High-dwell environments like airports, transit hubs, and city centres offer premium visibility where plans are being made, driving strong recall and engagement.
Travel marketers are doubling down on OOH: Here’s why
Out-of-home has become one of the fastest-growing channels for travel and tourism marketers. According to Broadsign data, travel’s share of OOH ad spend rose from 3.8% in 2023 to 5.7% in 2024, reaching 8% in early 2025—making it the top vertical for OOH spend so far this year.
According to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), major travel brands like Hotels.com, Expedia, and VRBO ranked among the top OOH advertisers in 2024. This surge in activity is being fueled by several key factors: growing demand for both domestic and international travel, renewed airline operations, and increased marketing investments from hotels, online travel agencies, and tourism boards eager to capture consumer attention.
Maximizing efficiency and reach: The dollar value of OOH
At a time when marketers are being asked to do more with less, OOH is proving to be one of the most efficient and effective channels for driving reach and results. For travel brands, it offers a rare mix of broad exposure, cost control, and message adaptability, making it a smart choice when performance and efficiency are under the microscope.
This efficiency is especially evident when comparing OOH to other media channels. The medium delivers high-impact visibility at a significantly lower cost per thousand impressions (CPM) than connected TV (CTV), paid social, or display. According to Solomon Partners and the World Out of Home Organization (WOO), OOH consistently offers a lower cost per impression, with average CPMs ranging from $2 to $9 USD, well below most digital formats. That makes it one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve mass reach, particularly in high-traffic, high-dwell time environments like airports, transit hubs, and city centres.
But cost efficiency doesn’t mean sacrificing performance. In fact, research from the OAAA and Comscore found that OOH drives online activation rates 5 to 6 times higher than expected, outperforming channels like TV, video, radio, banner ads, and print when it comes to driving digital engagement.
Even in a softening economy, travel marketers are maintaining or increasing their OOH investment, driven by sustained consumer demand for experiences and exploration. Domestic travel is gaining particular momentum—U.S. hotels and resorts ranked among the top 10 OOH product categories in 2024, accounting for 3% of total year-end spend. Tourism boards and airlines are also increasingly anchoring their media strategies in OOH, using it as the lead channel in integrated campaigns that blend broad awareness with measurable results.
At the same time, multi-city and international campaigns are scaling efficiently, allowing brands to build awareness across key markets while tailoring creative to specific audiences. Marketers can keep messaging consistent across regions while adapting visuals or calls to action for different cities or traveller segments—an essential advantage when engaging both global tourists and local visitors.
Finally, timing remains critical. Launching OOH campaigns ahead of peak travel windows or booking periods allows brands to influence decisions early in the planning journey. Many consumers start researching destinations weeks or months in advance, so a strong OOH presence during this window keeps your brand top of mind. Aligning campaigns with seasonal trends, long weekends, school breaks, or major events can further maximize reach and impact.
Measuring OOH’s real-world impact
For years, one of the biggest challenges in out-of-home advertising was proving its value beyond brand awareness. But that’s changing quickly. With the rise of advanced measurement tools and location intelligence platforms, travel marketers now have access to real-world insights that directly connect ad exposure to consumer behaviour.
Platforms like Arrivalist are leading this shift, offering new visibility into traveller movement and enabling marketers to understand how OOH influences actions like visits, overnight stays, and the path to purchase. By matching mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) to campaign exposure, tourism boards can measure visitation uplift and identify which audiences are most likely to act after seeing an OOH ad.
These insights go far beyond impressions, helping quantify tangible outcomes, like increased foot traffic to cities, attractions, hotels, or short-term rentals following a campaign. Marketers can also layer campaign data with flight, hotel, or rental trends to better understand travel intent and booking behaviour.
This level of attribution is especially valuable for tourism boards, which often need to justify public or partner funding by demonstrating a clear return on investment. As DOOH adoption grows, more campaigns are integrating measurement from the outset, enabling smarter optimizations and more transparent performance benchmarks throughout the campaign lifecycle.
Scaling smart with programmatic DOOH
Many of today’s travel campaigns span multiple markets, and programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) is helping power that growth. It gives brands the speed, agility, and precision needed to launch quickly, adapt mid-flight, and respond in real time to performance data. Unlike traditional media, programmatic buying eliminates long lead times, allowing marketers to shift budgets, swap creative, or refine targeting based on changing market conditions or traveller behaviour—all while retaining the bold, visual impact OOH is known for.
Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) adds another layer of relevance by tailoring content in real time based on data like location, weather, language, or time of day. For travel marketers, this enables region-specific offers, weather-based messaging, and event tie-ins that drive stronger engagement.
Programmatic tools also streamline cross-market execution, enabling consistent messaging across regions while customizing creative for local audiences. This makes them especially valuable for multi-city and global tourism campaigns.
Out-of-home is no longer just a top-of-funnel awareness tool—it’s a performance-driven, scalable, and data-rich channel built for modern travel marketing. Whether you’re launching a global tourism campaign or targeting specific markets with dynamic, real-time creative, OOH delivers the reach, efficiency, and impact needed to move travellers from inspiration to action.