Unlocking Wanderlust: AI, Storytelling and the New Travel Marketing Playbook
Summary
Jennifer Andre, Global VP of Business Development at Expedia Group Advertising, presented findings from their 'Science of Wanderlust' research at ITB Berlin 2026, marking her 15th ITB appearance. The research was conducted using a global survey of approximately 7,000 respondents combined with eye-tracking and emotion-reading technology from the Expedia Group Lab, specifically designed to understand emotional drivers of travel content engagement and AI sentiment among travelers.
The core research finding is that desire to travel is at an all-time high: 50% of consumers say travel is more important to them now than it was 5 years ago, and the majority plan at least one leisure trip in the next 12 months. However, the path to purchase remains complex — travelers consume an average of 141 pages of digital travel content in the 45 days prior to booking, creating enormous noise for advertisers to cut through.
The research output is a six-element framework organized into the acronym WANDER: Watchable content (video), Authenticity, Narrative clarity, Design for attention, Enhance with AI, and Representative advertising. Video dramatically outperforms static images; long-form video in particular generates the strongest positive emotions — joy and happiness. Travelers identified feeling motivated, relaxed, and joyful as the hallmarks of effective travel content.
Authenticity emerged as a critical differentiator in an AI-saturated content environment. The tones that build trust are transparency, clarity, confidence, and authenticity. User-generated content (UGC) is particularly effective because the raw, first-person filming style signals a real person having a real experience. On scene pacing, the research found that 2 to 9 seconds per scene is optimal for video — any shorter causes audience drop-off.
On AI specifically, the research found a clear dividing line: travelers are comfortable with AI for personalization, itinerary recommendations, price optimization, and customer service, but trust drops significantly once they suspect content is fully AI-generated. AI influencers and AI-generated visuals/articles are among the least trusted formats. The recommendation is to 'enhance with AI' rather than lead with it, preserving the human element.
Representative advertising was consistently flagged as a trust and relatability driver — females respond better to seeing other females, parents to family-oriented content. Expedia identified six distinct traveler archetypes with varying content preferences and platform behaviors. As a case study, the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism's 'Eats and Beats' documentary campaign — following a chef and musician experiencing the Bahamas through food and music — was cited as a real-world application of the framework. The campaign, still ongoing, has generated over $7 million in gross incremental bookings on the Expedia platform alone, 17 million impressions, a 164:1 return on ad spend, a ~2% clickthrough rate, and a 4% increase in length of stay, with distribution spanning Expedia's digital magazine, on-site and off-site display, social, YouTube, and CTV paired with shoppable content.
Key Takeaways
- •Travel desire is at an all-time high: 50% of consumers globally say travel is more important to them now than 5 years ago, and the majority plan at least one leisure trip in the next 12 months.
- •The pre-booking content journey is enormous: travelers consume an average of 141 pages of digital travel content in the 45 days before making a booking, creating both a massive opportunity and a noisy battleground for advertisers.
- •Long-form video generates the strongest traveler emotions — joy and happiness — outperforming short-form and static images for inspiration-phase marketing; travelers cite feeling motivated, relaxed, and joyful as indicators of effective travel content.
- •Optimal scene pacing for travel video is 2 to 9 seconds per scene — cutting faster loses the audience, while slower pacing reduces engagement.
- •Trust drops dramatically once travelers suspect content is fully AI-generated; AI should be used to enhance and personalize, not to replace the human element. AI influencers were called out as a particularly low-trust format.
- •Travelers are comfortable with AI for personalization, price discovery, itinerary recommendations, and customer service — these are the use cases where AI is welcomed rather than rejected.
- •User-generated content (UGC) is one of the most effective trust-building formats because the raw, first-person style signals authenticity to other travelers who look for likes, comments, and unpolished filming.
- •The three tones that build trust with travelers are transparency, clarity, confidence, and authenticity — directly positioning branded content against the perceived inauthenticity of AI-generated material.
- •Representative advertising that reflects the actual audience (e.g., females seeing females, parents seeing families) consistently improves relatability and trust; there is no one-size-fits-all travel content.
Transcript
Welcome back everybody. Full house again. Great to see you. ITV 2026. Can I hear you as well? Yes. Woo. We are moving into our afternoon. This is marketing as well, right? This is emotions. This is what we talk about. How do we actually bring the passion back in these times of geopolitical crisis back? Of course, into our industry. I don't um see any problems here at the ITB convention 2026. So again, it's great to have you here h in Berlin with us, but also live joining us virtually. Thank you ...
