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2018 Travel Marketing and PR Survey Results

At the end of December we put out a simple question to our list of travel marketing & PR people. It had only 5 questions:

  • What did you do less of in 2017 than you did in 2016?
  • What did you do more of in 2017 than you did in 2016?
  • What will you do less of in 2018 than you did in 2017?
  • What will you do more of in 2018 than you did in 2017?
  • What will you need help with in 2018?

Here are the results (click images to enlarge):

2017

2018

Conclusions

A couple of things jump out at me from these survey results:

  • This is not good news for traditional media. More companies cut their TV spending last year that raised it. Many more companies spent less money last year on print and radio advertising in particular.  In 2018 no companies planned to spent more on Print, Radio or TV. None.
  • Press Releases also seem to be seeing a decline. I won’t miss them.
  • 2017 was great news for Facebook. Lots more people were spending money on Facebook, although is not quite as strong a trend in 2018.
  • A lot of people plan to do more video in 2018.
  • It would be interesting to know if either the Facebook ad spend or the video (much of which is probably targeted for Facebook) will be affected by the recent decision to decrease the amount of company content and the amount of video that shows up in the user’s Facebook feed.
  • The other huge trend in 2018 is content, whether it be video, influencer marketing, content marketing or blogging. Whatever you call it you have to have more content this year.
  • As a podcaster I continue to be surprised how few people think about getting into podcasting. Given how social media can easily change an algorithm and undermine your strategy. Given 25% open rate of email is considered good. The 100% deliverability and long attention span of podcast listeners is something I would not dismiss.

How does this compare with your 2018 plans?