Nobody’s got any money.
(Apologies, we’re starting on a bum note.)
The cost of living keeps climbing – I mean, I saw a block of cheese for £6 the other day (and no, it wasn’t in Waitrose). Childcare has become like a second mortgage. Pricey pints used to be a London problem but they’ve crept into Devon too (though if you want some local tips, scroll down).
The squeeze is very real. People are feeling it everywhere. So you’d think holidays would be the first to go…
Except they’re not.
Did you know, according to a 2025 TripAdvisor study, 95% of people would happily cut back elsewhere just to make their trips happen?
And according to that same survey, rather than abandoning travel altogether, people are just adapting to the changing circumstances, for instance, swapping to staycations (when it makes sense), choosing lower-cost alternatives or booking package holidays (which makes sticking to a budget much easier).
Even in these challenging circumstances, holidays are the thing people will sacrifice almost anything else to protect.
Holidays are the escape, the reset, the marker in the calendar which gets people through the grind. They are the reason people work all year - for those few precious weeks away from the grind.
For travel brands, that emotional pull is really - and I mean really - something we need to tap into.
The importance of emotional metrics
Many travel brands are overreliant on performance marketing, and within that, paid search. And as a result, their key KPIs focus on digitally led metrics, and very little else. This overreliance on digital is not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't offer the full picture of why people booked - even if it's telling you how valuable the money you plugged into Google or Meta was.
As we’ve said, if holidays are driven by emotion - the promise of escape, the reset, the reward - then marketing measurement needs to capture that too. Tracking awareness, sentiment, share of voice, and the stories people connect your brand with provides a clearer view of its long-term health - more so than CTRs or conversion rates.
Clicks tell you someone saw an ad. Bookings tell you someone converted. Neither tells you why they chose you - or why they’ll come back (and N.B. it’s not because of your choice of font on your Facebook Ad).
That’s why engaging in emotionally driven marketing matters (and measuring it accordingly). Awareness shows whether people even have you in mind, sentiment tells you if they feel good about your brand, perceptions show you what they think about you and what sets you apart. What people associate with your brand is probably the clearest indication that you mean more to them than what you cost. But these metrics can take time to build, and so activity is often shelved before it’s had a chance to take root and begin to make an impact.
Why emotional engagement is important
When you connect with your customers emotionally: they think of you first, they’re less hung up on price, they come back for repeat bookings and recommend you to others. The average consumer looks at 20-38 websites when planning a holiday, according to Expedia. What would that purchase journey look like if they only visited your site, and 1-2 others, because their desire to travel with you was stronger than the need to find the cheapest deal? As we’ve said, people are already prioritising their holidays above almost everything else, so that connection only strengthens your position. It also means you’re not constantly leaning on paid ads just to keep things moving. We’ve written more about how to escape the performance loop in June’s blog.
Tracking emotional engagement
Emotional impact isn’t as easy to measure as a click, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.
Brand and consumer metrics
Awareness: are you the first name that comes to mind (spontaneous recall), or do people recognise you when prompted?
Perception: what do they associate you with? Luxury, safety, adventure, ethics, or are you family-friendly?
Consideration: would they actually book with you if they had the choice?
Affinity and advocacy: do they come back, recommend or score you highly on NPS?
Campaign metrics and signals
How long do people dwell on your content? Do they share it, save it or create their own?
Social sentiment is the tone of what people are saying - is it positive, negative or neutral?
Surveys which test how perception has shifted after seeing your campaign. One of our campaigns involved running a small TV campaign for Just You - a specialist holiday brand. Our post campaign survey found that trust, reliability and sense of safety for solo female travel all increased.
Brand tracking over time to see if you’re moving in the right direction.
Advanced testing of emotional engagement
There are some advanced testing methods which probe further into what elicits emotion in marketing and advertising.
The Works - a partnership between the Advertising Association, Kantar and Marketing Week - identifies the campaigns which generate the strongest positive public response and publishes monthly analysis on what made them work. Recent winners from the travel sector include Great Western Railway’s ‘Five and the Thrilling Engagement’, which ranked in the top 3% of all ads for distinctiveness and Virgin Atlantic’s ‘See the world differently’, which placed in the top 11% of UK ads for feel-good factor.
As part of The Works, Kantar’s testing involves asking ad viewers questions about branding, enjoyment and persuasiveness, then compares the results to benchmark data. They also use facial coding to track second-by-second emotional reactions while people watch the ad. Combining these methods gives clear insights as to the emotional response the ad is eliciting.
How to create emotional campaigns
To measure emotional engagement, you have to create campaigns which genuinely spark it! Unfortunately that means stepping out of your comfort zone – yes – step away from your digital only strategy!
At Bluesoup, we’ve built this into how we work. It starts with our brand architecture workshops, distilling what your brand stands for and what sets it apart. That could be the unique experiences you offer, your specialist guides or the extraordinary customer service.
We then get ruthless and single-minded about your messaging; one strong message is always more powerful than a scattergun approach. We also bring in behavioural insight, keeping the idea brutally simple and avoiding tired category clichés (you won’t see any golden sands or chocolate-box cottages around here). And because we’re media neutral, we’ll go where your customers are – running small, measurable experiments before scaling up – whether that’s direct mail, social or even an aerial banner.
Take our work with the Eden Project in Cornwall. Our goal was to make Eden synonymous with Cornwall, and to inject some excitement and sparkle back into their media activity, to give a sense for what a visit to Eden would be like. We created large-scale activations – banners in the sky, 20ft inflatable astronauts, sand art on beaches, even graphics at service stations as people travelled towards Cornwall – so visitors felt the anticipation before they’d even arrived. The aerial banner went on to outperform traditional leaflets, becoming Eden’s most recognised medium.
As a travel marketing agency, we know our sector has a natural advantage; people will always want a holiday and travel advertising naturally sparks emotions like excitement, inspiration and surprise. Kantar’s data shows the travel sector scores above average for enjoyment, and that’s a powerful starting point. But let’s be clear - this is a highly competitive market which means standing out is harder than ever. That’s why bold, emotionally charged creative is so important.
If building emotional campaigns feels like a challenge, let’s chat. And maybe we can do it over a pint - provided it’s from my shortlist of Devon’s still-affordable pubs.
