Why audience building is the real performance advantage for travel brands

Performance marketing platforms continue to evolve, offering smarter functionality and increasingly automated targeting. And yet, for many travel brands, performance is becoming harder rather than easier. Competition for bookings is intense, costs are rising, and meaningful differentiation is increasingly difficult to achieve.

It’s tempting to blame these challenges on external market forces. In reality, many performance issues stem from strategy rather than circumstance. Just because platforms like Meta can build audiences automatically doesn’t mean brands should rely on them entirely.

Investing time and effort in building audiences that genuinely reflect the shoppers you want to reach is one of the most valuable and underused levers in modern travel performance marketing.  

As automation becomes the default, brands that rely on generic audiences risk competing on efficiency alone, not relevance.

There is no such thing as a “standard” travel audience

One of the most common assumptions in travel performance marketing is that audiences are largely interchangeable. Brands may sell similar products, operate in the same destinations and compete for the same bookings, but that does not mean they are speaking to the same travellers in the same way.

“No one is like your audience. Even when brands are selling similar things, people still want choice. Good performance marketing is about making sure your brand earns a place in that consideration set,” says Dan Jenkins, Head of Client Services at Platform 195.

For senior marketing leaders, this comes down to whether audiences are deliberately built or passively inherited from the platform. Generic audience strategies might deliver short-term efficiency, but they rarely build sustainable advantage. When every brand relies on the same automated targeting, differentiation quickly disappears.

Automation is powerful but it still needs direction

Performance platforms are increasingly designed to reduce manual input. Automation can remove friction, speed up optimisation and surface patterns that would be difficult to identify by hand. But what automation does not replace is strategic thinking. AI tools work best when guided.  Left alone, they optimise towards the average.

“If you were using Meta for the first time today, you’d probably lean heavily into automation. But the devil is in the detail. There’s still real value in giving platforms clear audience direction rather than leaving everything to chance,” says Dan.

That direction starts with research, understanding competitors, exploring related travel interests, layering destinations, behaviours, and intent signals, rather than relying on a single audience input. In practice, this often means combining multiple audience layers not just where someone wants to go, but how they travel, what they compare, and what else they consider along the way.

Platforms may increasingly talk about observational or automated audiences, but what they learn still depends on the signals they are given.

Audience building is a process, not a setup task

Another common mistake in performance marketing is treating audience selection as a one-off decision. Strong performance rarely comes from rigid frameworks or fixed “best practice”. It comes from testing, learning, and adapting over time.

“Clients often want clear structure, which makes sense. But performance doesn’t work in straight lines. If something isn’t working, we adjust it. That testing and learning never really stops,” explains Dan.

This is especially true in travel, where consideration cycles are longer, and intent develops gradually. Switching campaigns off too quickly is one of the most frequent (and avoidable) errors.

“If you’re seeing softer conversion signals like add-to-cart activity, that’s interest. You need to give campaigns time to learn. Two weeks is often the minimum before performance starts to stabilise,” adds Dan.

For senior leaders under pressure to show results, this requires confidence in the strategy, the signals, and the process itself.

Creative and audience strategy need to evolve together

Audience building does not exist in isolation from creative. In fact, the two are deeply connected.

Limiting performance activity to a single creative format or execution restricts what platforms can learn about your audience. Travel brands that see the strongest results allow creative and audience strategies to evolve together.

“We’ve seen brands unlock strong results simply by expanding the mix. A carousel can outperform expectations, reels can work incredibly well for some audiences — the key is testing different formats and letting performance show you what to scale,” says Dan.

For travel brands, this matters because inspiration plays such a central role in decision-making. Strong creative helps surface intent signals earlier, which in turn strengthens audience learning and improves downstream performance.

Audience quality improves when creative gives people a reason to engage. Likewise, when creative is limited, audience learning is limited too.

Why audience building matters more as performance gets harder

As search becomes more competitive and less predictable, performance activity earlier in the journey takes on greater importance.

Audience-led performance allows brands to build demand, not just capture it at the point of conversion. That’s why audience strategy matters just as much in brand campaigns as it does in performance activity — it helps keep brands visible while travellers are still exploring options, comparing alternatives and shaping preferences.

“Even when products look similar, how you show up makes the difference,” notes Dan.

For OTAs, hotel groups, attractions, and other travel retailers, audience building now plays a central role in shaping both performance outcomes and brand relevance.

The real investment is time, not technology

The biggest misconception about audience building is that it requires more tools. In reality, it requires more intent. What separates strong performance programmes from average ones is the willingness to invest time in research, testing and learning, and to apply human insight where automation alone falls short.

For travel brands navigating a more competitive performance landscape, audience building is a powerful foundation that allows automation, creative and optimisation to work together effectively. Investing in building your audiences should be a key component of any robust strategy.

To explore how performance, audience and commerce marketing are evolving across the travel journey, download our latest ebook, The new travel commerce marketing playbook. If you’d like to discuss how Platform 195 supports travel brands with strategic, effective performance marketing, speak to the team.