How Tourism Boards and Hotels Are Inspiring Travellers Through Outdoor Media in 2025
Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising has become one of the most powerful tools for tourism and hotel brands looking to inspire travellers, drive bookings, and build long-term brand affinity.
As global travel continues to surge post-pandemic, destinations and hospitality groups are rediscovering how impactful outdoor media can be when it meets people in the real world — at airports, in city centres, on the London Underground, or even on the side of a taxi or bus.
OOH is where emotion and context meet scale. It makes travellers stop, dream, and plan their next journey.
In 2025, with data, digital screens, and programmatic buying transforming the space, OOH is not just visible; it’s measurable, dynamic, and highly effective for travel brands that want to make an impression before, during, and after the journey.
The Power of Real-World Influence
The path to travel booking starts long before a customer visits a website or talks to a travel agent. It starts with a spark — often from a billboard, airport screen, or bus ad that plants the seed of a new experience.
OOH uniquely captures these moments of curiosity: the split second when a commuter glances at a poster of turquoise water or a traveller sees a new city skyline en route to departures.
Recent industry research reinforces this:
– 72% of travellers say they’ve been inspired to visit a destination after seeing it advertised in an OOH environment.
– OOH campaigns are 2.5x more likely to drive online activation compared to other offline channels, particularly when paired with mobile retargeting.
– Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) now accounts for over half of all OOH spend in major markets, allowing for real-time creative updates and location-based precision.
For tourism and hospitality marketers, this creates a rare opportunity to use OOH as a medium that inspires at scale, guides intent, and converts curiosity into action.
Why OOH Resonates So Deeply with Travellers
1. Emotionally Driven Creative
Travel is inherently emotional. It’s about escape, discovery, and connection.
OOH is built to amplify that emotion, with large, high-quality visuals that immerse audiences in the promise of a place or experience.
From cinematic airport lightboxes to digital billboards that showcase changing destinations, OOH enables brands to tell stories that feel expansive and aspirational.
2. Location Relevance
OOH reaches travellers in contextually perfect locations, just as they’re making decisions or dreaming about their next trip.
Whether that’s in the departure lounge at Heathrow, on a bus in Manchester, or passing through Oxford Circus, OOH captures attention in high-value, high-footfall environments.
3. Complementary to Digital
OOH doesn’t compete with digital channels; it amplifies them.
Today’s campaigns are often built around online–offline synergy, where physical media drives digital search, social sharing, and retargeting.
QR codes, data feeds, and programmatic DOOH make it possible to create personalised, measurable engagement from what used to be purely visual media.
4. Trust and Credibility
Unlike digital ads that can feel intrusive or disposable, OOH carries an inherent sense of trust and permanence.
When a tourism board or global hotel group invests in large-scale OOH, it signals confidence, stability, and prestige — values that travellers naturally associate with credible destinations and brands.
Case in Point: How Travel Brands Are Using OOH in 2025
Visit Maldives – Capturing Wanderlust Across Cities and Airports
Visit Maldives has become a benchmark in destination marketing through OOH.
Their global campaigns have consistently used large-format placements across the London Underground, key UK airports, and city landmarks to maintain visibility throughout the travel year.
The creative is simple but evocative: sunlit waters, tranquil islands, and a line that reads “The Sunny Side of Life.”
By focusing on emotional resonance rather than price or logistics, Visit Maldives reinforces its position as a dream destination, not just a location.
In the UK, the campaign extended across Heathrow, Gatwick, and Canary Wharf, ensuring the brand reached both leisure travellers and business professionals in premium settings.
OOH made the destination omnipresent: a constant reminder to “book that trip” every time someone saw turquoise seas on a grey London morning.
Egypt Tourism – Turning Curiosity into Bookings
Egypt’s tourism campaigns over the past few years have leaned on OOH to bring the country’s history and energy to life.
Through bus supersides, and roadside banners, Egypt showcased its unique blend of culture, climate, and heritage — from the Pyramids to the Red Sea.
Rather than focusing solely on history, creative messaging emphasised modern Egypt: safe, dynamic, and open for exploration year-round.
By pairing OOH with digital amplification and flight route partnerships, the campaign successfully increased search volume and booking intent from key European markets.
The visual consistency across multiple OOH formats created brand recall that digital ads alone couldn’t achieve.
Hyatt Hotels – Building Urban Visibility in Berlin and Beyond
For hospitality brands, the challenge isn’t just driving awareness — it’s maintaining visibility in competitive urban environments.
Hyatt Hotels tackled this through a campaign in Berlin that combined digital city screens, airport placements, and transport formats.
Each creative execution tied into Hyatt’s global branding while reflecting the local personality of the city: “Stay Inspired in Berlin.”
The result was increased direct booking traffic and stronger brand visibility among international business travellers and tourists alike.
How Excite OOH Connects Destinations with Audiences in Motion
At Excite OOH, we help travel and hospitality brands connect with audiences in moments that matter, at every stage of the journey.
From global tourism boards to boutique hotels, our campaigns are designed to inspire, engage, and deliver measurable impact across the entire OOH ecosystem.
– Airport Advertising
Airports remain the most influential environment for travel marketers.
Our airport network reaches millions of passengers at points of high dwell time and premium brand exposure — ideal for destination marketing, flight partnerships, and hospitality launches.
– London Underground Advertising
The London Underground provides unrivalled reach among urban travellers, professionals, and outbound holidaymakers.
Formats include digital escalator panels, cross-track 48-sheets, and long-term brand dominations at key interchanges.
–Bus Advertising
Bus advertising offers high-frequency coverage across key cities, towns, and tourist routes.
It’s an excellent format for building destination familiarity and reinforcing brand messages across commuter and visitor audiences.
– Taxi Advertising
Taxi wraps and tip-seat formats deliver premium visibility across urban centres.
Taxis naturally reach tourists, business travellers, and residents — making them ideal for both awareness and consideration campaigns targeting inbound audiences.
– Billboard Advertising
Billboards remain the cornerstone of impactful outdoor media.
They deliver scale, emotion, and instant recognition — from towering roadside displays to high-footfall digital sites in city centres.
For travel and hospitality brands, billboards offer the perfect canvas to spark inspiration and brand desire.
Making OOH Measurable: Data, Insight, and Accountability
Gone are the days when outdoor advertising was purely about reach and frequency.
Today, OOH is a performance channel powered by data, audience insight, and cross-channel attribution.
At Excite OOH, we combine location intelligence, mobile data, and audience mapping to plan campaigns that target the right travellers at the right time.
We can identify audiences by travel intent, frequent flyer data, or even proximity to key retail and airport zones.
Our integrated reporting allow clients to track:
– Impressions and reach
– Mobile retargeting activity
– Brand uplift and search behaviour
– Digital attribution through QR or URL engagement
This makes OOH not just a creative medium, but a strategic investment that complements digital and delivers quantifiable ROI.
The Creative Edge: Storytelling That Moves People
What truly separates successful travel campaigns from the rest is storytelling.
OOH gives marketers a blank canvas for emotion and experience — a way to visualise a journey before it happens.
A great piece of travel OOH isn’t just a poster; it’s an invitation.
Think of the Maldives’ turquoise waters, Egypt’s golden sands, or a Hyatt billboard glowing over Alexanderplatz — these aren’t just ads, they’re moments of aspiration that live in memory long after the viewer has moved on.
By combining powerful creative with smart media placement, OOH becomes a bridge between inspiration and action, sparking wanderlust and guiding travellers to book.
Looking Ahead to WTM London 2025
As the global travel community gathers at WTM London, one theme stands out: visibility drives value.
Destinations, airlines, and hospitality brands that invest in being seen in the real world are the ones that win mindshare, consideration, and long-term loyalty.
OOH delivers that visibility.
It offers the scale to inspire, the precision to target, and the credibility to convert.
For tourism boards, OOH turns awareness into arrival numbers.
For hotel groups, it builds trust and recall in highly competitive markets.
And for travellers, it keeps the dream of discovery alive on every journey.
If you’re attending WTM London, come and meet the Excite OOH team.
We’ll show you how we’re helping the world’s leading destinations and hospitality brands tell their stories through outdoor media, locally and globally.
