Data, discussions and a fantastic day at the ABTA Travel Marketing Conference

Last week (20 May 2026), our Head of Data Consultancy, Scott Logie, and I had the pleasure of speaking at the ABTA Travel Marketing Conference in Westminster and what a day it was.

As an ABTA partner and event sponsor, PDV was proud to be part of such an informative gathering of travel marketing minds. The room was buzzing with the kind of energy that makes you remember exactly why this industry is so special.

What we talked about

Scott and I took the stage to present Data-Driven Marketing & Analytics in Travel: From Understanding Travellers to AI-Ready Growth. Our aim was simple – cut through the noise around data, analytics and AI, and focus on what’s actually driving growth in travel right now.

We covered three core themes:

1. Understanding travellers better. Most travel brands are still targeting on demographics – age, household income – when the real gold lies in behavioural signals, such as search patterns, booking intent and journey stage. Whether someone is dreaming, planning or ready to book matters enormously. We shared how dynamic segmentation and proper personalisation, not just a first name on an email but genuinely relevant messaging at the right moment on the right channel, can meaningfully lift conversion rates, while reducing acquisition costs.
2. Proving marketing works. This is where so many teams fall down. Last-click attribution remains the default but it doesn’t reflect reality. Channels don’t work in isolation – paid media influences search, email drives return visits, offline drives online behaviour. We talked through multi-touch attribution, econometric modelling and the value of incrementality testing. At PDV, we advocate for running a hold-out cell with every campaign: hold back a comparable segment, don’t send them the activity, and compare the results. It’s one of the clearest ways to understand what’s genuinely moving the needle.
3. Getting AI-ready. AI is here whether we’re ready or not and the single biggest determinant of whether it works for you is the quality of your data. Fragmented, siloed, inconsistent data produces unreliable outputs. An AI-ready data foundation doesn’t have to mean a full CRM overhaul. Tactical single customer views, data layering and clean deduplication can make a transformative difference without massive investment. As one panellist put it on the day: “Talk to the data guys.” We couldn’t agree more!

Highlights from the PDV team

It wouldn’t be a conference round-up without sharing what resonated most with us beyond our own session.

Scott’s highlights: Two sessions stood out for Scott. The WeRoad ‘community’ presentation was genuinely inspiring. The concept of solo travellers building real friendships and becoming part of a larger community through shared trips is a wonderful proposition and a powerful reminder that travel can be transformative in ways that go far beyond the destination. Scott also loved the YouGov sports travel session. As a fan traveller and an activity seeker, he’s exactly the niche demographic sitting in the Venn diagram overlap between sports fans and experience-seekers. Being able to identify and target that group represents a huge opportunity for travel brands.

Naomi’s highlights: For our Marketing Lead, Naomi Hurst, attending as a relative newcomer to the travel sector, the session that resonated most was Intrepid Travel CMO Hazel McGuire’s honest conversation about brand versus performance marketing. It’s a tension every marketer knows, trying to justify brand-building spend to commercially-minded budget holders who want to see immediate ROI. Hazel’s story was compelling. Pre-COVID, Intrepid spent 90% of their budget on performance marketing, racing to the bottom with discounts. With CPC rising and margins under pressure, that wasn’t a sustainable strategy. So, they made a bold transition, gradually shifting the balance over two years, quarter by quarter, until they reached a 50/50 brand-to-performance split. It took two to three years for that brand investment to translate into commercial ROI, but it did.

Hazel’s advice to marketers embarking on a similar journey:

• Get your data architecture right first (garbage in, garbage out, especially with AI)
• Find the narrative that speaks to your CFO in a language they understand
• Be as targeted in brand as you are in performance
• Take learnings from other sectors

Bigger picture

The day’s seminars also surfaced some broader themes worth reflecting on. AI wasn’t the buzzword of the day, as expected. Instead, it was measurement, getting your data foundations and audiences segmented for effective personalisation.

The rise in solo travel and the loneliness epidemic, particularly among younger generations, is reshaping how people think about trips. Younger travellers aren’t just booking travel to attend events; they’re also seeking new locations, new experiences and a sense of community, as per Scott’s key takeaways.

Social media is evolving too, with longer search queries, the rise of UGC and authentic advocacy, and the need to treat social as a two-way community, rather than an advertising billboard – all being recurring threads.

And underpinning it all: audience-first thinking. Build your buyer audience before you decide your channel. It sounds obvious but it’s still far from universal practice.

We’re already looking forward to attending the next ABTA event! In the meantime, if any of the themes above resonate with you – whether that’s segmentation, attribution, AI-readiness or anything in between – I’d love to talk.