Reaching International Travellers Before They Arrive in the US

The check-in desk may be in the US, but the booking decision can happen much earlier and much farther away.

International travellers often make decisions about where to stay and what to experience before they reach their destination. For hotels and hospitality brands, this creates two distinct opportunities: reaching travellers before they book and reaching them while they are already travelling. Both stages are valuable, but the messaging, targeting and campaign objectives should differ.

Before they book vs. while they travel

Before they book: Travellers are still deciding where to go, when to travel and where to stay. OOH in their home markets, including city centres, business districts and departure airports, can build awareness and consideration for a property and destination.

While they travel: The journey is already underway. Airport DOOH, arrival environments and transit locations can reach travellers who may still be choosing where to stay, extending their trip or planning what to do after arrival. Messaging can therefore be more immediate and focused on the property's location, experiences or relevant offers.

A single campaign can address both stages, but planning each stage around its own audience, locations, timing and campaign objective can make the strategy more effective.

Choose the markets where your guests are

Reaching international travellers starts with understanding where potential guests are coming from and identifying the markets and travel environments where they can be reached before and during their journey. This could include major cities in key markets, international airports or locations around connecting hubs.

For example, a luxury hotel in New York, Miami or Los Angeles could target relevant international markets based on its guest strategy, then select OOH environments that align with where those audiences are likely to be. The campaign can be tailored by location, timing and available audience information.

This approach allows hospitality brands to put their media investment in the markets and environments most relevant to their international acquisition goals.

Plan around where international flights begin

Airport advertising is often planned around the destination airport, where travellers land. For hotels targeting international travellers, the origin of specific international flights can be just as useful.

If a property knows which routes bring its guests to the US, it can identify where those travellers are originating from, the airports where their journeys begin and the OOH environments around those airports and the cities they serve.

This connects airport DOOH planning to specific international source markets. A Miami hotel targeting travellers from a particular European or Latin American city, for example, could focus its media on that origin market rather than spreading its budget across every international environment.

It also creates an opportunity to communicate in the traveller's native language, where appropriate. Creative can be adapted for each source market so that the message is relevant to the audience, their language and the purpose of their trip.

Look beyond the major international hubs

International travel is not limited to traditional hub-to-hub routes between major gateway airports. More direct connections can also create opportunities to reach travellers from smaller origin cities and airports.

For hospitality brands, understanding emerging international routes, smaller airports, direct flight connections and the traveller origin markets behind them can help identify audiences that a major-hub-only strategy could miss.

This is where Moving Walls can support the planning process by helping identify relevant audiences and available OOH and DOOH inventory to reach them, depending on inventory availability in each market.

Extend your campaign beyond US borders

Once the relevant markets are identified, DOOH gives hotels flexibility in where and when they reach international travellers. Campaigns can be planned around specific locations, travel periods and available audience information across international markets, depending on inventory and buying methods.

Hotels can adjust their media activity around priority source markets and travel periods rather than relying on a single market or environment. Programmatic activation can also provide a flexible way to access eligible digital inventory across multiple locations, depending on campaign requirements and available supply.

This allows hotel brands and their agencies to build international campaigns around the markets, audiences and travel moments that are most relevant to their acquisition strategy.

Planning around the audience

Moving Walls starts with the audience, helping hospitality brands plan OOH around the markets, locations and audiences most relevant to their campaign objectives. MW Planner supports this process by bringing audience intelligence, location planning, forecasting and optimisation together, allowing planners to evaluate potential locations and media allocations before a campaign is activated.

For international traveller targeting, this can include source markets, departure airports and arrival environments, each mapped to the stage of the traveller journey the campaign is designed to reach.

Existing social media campaigns can also be adapted for DOOH, creating additional physical touchpoints for audiences beyond digital channels.

Beyond measuring reach and impressions, campaigns can also be evaluated through incrementality, providing a way to assess whether OOH exposure contributed to an outcome beyond what would have occurred without the campaign.

A hotel campaign shows the planning approach in practice

A Moving Walls campaign for a global luxury hotel in Sydney demonstrates how audience and location planning can be applied to hospitality advertising.

• The 13-day programmatic DOOH campaign ran across 27 premium digital screens, generating more than 2.52 million impressions and reaching 284,054 unique individuals.

The campaign focused on CBD and transit environments where travellers, commuters and shoppers were likely to be present. Audience and location information helped inform media selection, while programmatic activation provided flexibility during the campaign.

The case study demonstrates planning, targeting, media delivery and audience reach, rather than directly attributing international hotel bookings to the campaign.

While the campaign was for a Sydney property, the example demonstrates the planning and activation approach that can also be applied by hospitality brands operating across international markets: identifying relevant audiences, understanding where they are likely to be and selecting OOH environments that align with the campaign objective.

Tell us where your next guests are coming from

If you are a hotel or hospitality brand looking to attract more international travellers, start with two questions: which countries or markets do you want to attract guests from, and when do you need to generate more bookings?

Share these with the Moving Walls team, and we can develop a DOOH strategy and media plan around your source markets, the airports and environments where those travellers can be reached, and the timing that matters to your business.