New Marketing Tactics for Driving Multigenerational Household Travel

When our Millennial friends and colleagues “boomeranged” home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it revived a longstanding but little-discussed American trend: the multi-generational household. 

Over the past decade, the number of multi-generational households nearly quadrupled, according to a new study by Generations United. Six of 10 participants surveyed in the study said they started or are planning to continue to live in a multigenerational home because of the pandemic.

That demographic insight may stimulate creative thinking for the travel and tourism industry because it isn’t just another incremental shift. It activates a new way of thinking about planning, executing and measuring travel campaigns. 

Every family has a trip planner. Mom or dad “owns” it and pulls the trigger on travel purchases. But family travel isn’t a solo enterprise. It requires buy-in from the kids, the grandparents or anyone occupying a seat in the minivan. The trouble is marketing travel to each influencer is both expensive and inefficient.

Getting this balance right is becoming even more timely as 81% of Americans indicate they have summer travel plans, a 42% increase over last year, according to a survey by The Vacationer. Despite inflation and high prices at the pump, only 12% of Americans plan to travel less than they did last summer. 

Despite pent-up consumer demand, travel marketing outlays face the looming threat of a recession. Yet, rather than go dark by cutting spending altogether and losing momentum, veteran marketers will reshape their campaigns in highly targeted and innovative ways. 

Resolving to the multigenerational household

Unlike the family outings you knew as a kid, today’s multigenerational household travel may entail more nuanced choices than a theme park or a cruise line, such as whitewater rafting for young adults and teens, wine tasting or museums for parents, and dining al fresco at a (non-chain) restaurant. It takes longer to pull these plans together, but it’s not a one-solution-fits-all excursion. 

Travel marketers appreciate this consumer trend for another reason — because aiming campaigns at the household level enable more precise spending. With household campaigns, marketers typically create segments based on generations. To reach these generation-based segments, advertisers can tap into Viant’s Household ID (VHHID) and access 115 million U.S. households to plan and then gauge the impact of their travel campaigns. 

As marketers shift away from individual-level targeting, the VHHID offers a cookieless path to building successful relationships with all members in a household across each of their devices. VHHID employs patented technology and big data management know-how to enable marketers to pinpoint which of the 115 million households are suitable for targeted advertising.

Finding the target audience with the VHHID isn’t limited to traditional ad channels, either. 

Working with our partners at Arrivalist, we can reach these generational segments, look back and see if they were exposed to a Connected TV (CTV) ad, and see how each audience segment impacted household travel. Arrivalist distills mobile location data and provides true attribution, measuring where people are coming from and how they stay. You can’t do that with traditional TV.

CTV has earned its place as a go-to channel for many travel and leisure branding campaigns. Now, when tracking is more important than ever, CTV provides a robust return on ad spend (ROAS) report. Using tools such as our Viant DSP,  marketers can easily track how their budget performs across multiple channels. Just as travelers seek more flexibility with refundable bookings, smart marketers may need to unencumber themselves if a campaign underperforms expectations. The only way to know is with accurate measurement.

With Viant’s DSP, you can manage campaigns holistically and track how your media dollars are performing. You can understand what media is working harder for you and what’s driving the lift in your business. That provides marketers with the information to drive measurable business outcomes.