Itineraries of impact

In the age of digital omnipresence, the act of travel—once a solitary pursuit of maps, guidebooks, and whispered recommendations—has become a communal, algorithmically orchestrated dance. The 2025 Tourism Economics (by Oxford Economics) “Measuring Meta’s Impact on the Travel & Tourism Sector” Report, commissioned in partnership with Meta, reads less like a ledger of numbers and more like a chronicle of a world in flux, where the boundaries between dreaming and doing, between inspiration and action, between online and offline, are seamlessly traversed and mutually inspirational.

The new cartographers: social media as a travel guide

Imagine the modern traveler. Before a suitcase is packed or a ticket booked, there is the scroll—a thumb gliding across a constellation of images, stories and reels. According to the report, 43% of global travelers now consult social media when planning their international adventures, and for those aged 18 to 54, that figure climbs to 56%. Meta technologies—Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp—are not mere tools; they are the new cartographers, mapping desire and possibility in real time.

But this is not a phenomenon confined to one traveler demographic. The report finds that 83% of travelers, regardless of age, consider social media content a significant factor in their final travel decisions. The digital divide, it seems, is narrowing, replaced by a universal dependence on the wisdom of crowds and the allure of curated feeds.

Meta technologies as growth engines

Beneath the surface of likes and shares, a quieter revolution is underway. Meta technologies, the report reveals, are not just shaping journeys—they are fueling economies. In 2024 alone, advertising on Meta supported $4.2 billion in additional revenue for travel and tourism businesses in the United States, $3.6 billion in the EU27, and $0.6 billion in the United Kingdom. These figures ripple outward: $5.6 billion in GDP for the US, $3.7 billion for the EU27, $0.7 billion for the UK, tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue sustained by the digital tide.

This is not the economics of the traditional travel planning journey, but a synthesis of direct, indirect and sequential impact of the interplay between online and offline. The traveler sees the video of a travel creator, books a room online; the hotel hires physical staff; the staff spends wages in their communities based on the recommendation of a Facebook group connection and a complementary ad they saw on Instagram. The digital journey is the catalyst to the physical one, with Meta technologies as the unseen conductor.

The five acts of the traveler’s journey

The report divides the traveler’s experience into five acts, each shaped by digital content:

1. Dreaming & Planning: Here, the traveler is a poet, seduced by short-form videos and influencer tales. Over half the time spent on Meta technologies is devoted to video, and social media is now the third most important planning tool, trailing only review sites and online travel agents.
2. Booking: The act of commitment, once a matter of phone calls and paper forms, is now seamless and mobile. Online bookings account for more than half of hotel reservations, and 62% of bookings are made on mobile devices.
3. Experiencing: The journey itself is augmented by business messaging and real-time support. WhatsApp, for example, has transformed customer service, yielding conversion rates ten times higher than traditional channels.
4. Sharing: The traveler becomes the storyteller, their reviews and photos more influential than any critic. Over 42% of travelers trust peer reviews above all else, and more than half refuse to book with brands lacking consumer feedback.
5. Re-engagement: The cycle continues, as shared experiences inspire new journeys, and the digital narrative grows richer with each iteration.

The art of destination marketing: Eight lessons for the digital age

For those in government, political and nonprofit organizations, the report offers a guide for the future:

• Embrace AI: Artificial intelligence is not a distant promise but a present reality, driving down costs and boosting conversions. The Barceló Hotel Group saw a 29% increase in bookings with AI-driven campaigns.
• Tell a unified story: National branding must be holistic, weaving together public and private voices into a tapestry that endures beyond fleeting events.
• Empower creators: The creator economy is ascendant. Brands that partner with authentic voices see higher engagement and faster purchase decisions.
• Deepen engagement: Messaging technologies are the new front desks, offering multilingual, personalized support that builds loyalty and trust. The Visit Valencia Foundation experienced a 41x increase in customer engagement after consolidating all Las Fallas festival events onto WhatsApp.
• Diversify creativity: Automation enables rapid testing and optimization of creative assets, ensuring that campaigns resonate across cultures and contexts. Finnair used the Advantage+ automated placement and budget optimization features to distribute ads across Meta’s platforms and allocate resources efficiently based on performance, and saw a 16% lift in total paid searches driven by Meta ads.
• Leverage short-form video: Reels and similar formats are the lingua franca of digital storytelling, essential for capturing attention in a crowded marketplace. To assess the impact of Meta’s automated tools, including the opportunity score, in Meta Ads Manager, flyadeal partnered with its agency LIVEmena to run a Conversion Lift test comparing two setups: one using manual audience and placement selection, and another using automated Advantage+ audience and placements. An assessment comparing the Advantage+ and Reels-optimized campaigns with the traditional manual approach showed that implementing the opportunity score’s recommendations drove 12.4x higher return on ad spend for add-to-cart.
• Adopt AR/VR: Augmented and virtual reality are breaking down barriers, making travel more inclusive and immersive.
• Be data-driven: Analytics and experimentation are the compass and sextant of modern marketing, guiding strategy and measuring impact. Turkish Airlines, in partnership with OMD, conducted a Meta Conversion Lift study to measure the true impact of its Meta ads on search-driven conversions. The approach showed that the airline achieved 143,000 incremental paid and organic search conversions, with 17% of all search conversions attributed to Meta ads.

Toward a more human digital future

What emerges from the Tourism Economics report is not just a portrait of Meta technologies as economic engines, but as cultural catalysts. The traveler’s journey is now a shared narrative, shaped by millions of voices and billions of data points. For digital marketers in the government, political, and nonprofit spheres, the challenge—and the opportunity—is to harness this energy thoughtfully, provocatively, and with cultural awareness.

In the end, the digital transformation of travel is not about technology alone. It is about connection between people, places, and possibilities. The platforms may be virtual, but the impact is profoundly real, driving economic growth and deeper connection around the world.

Find out more by exploring the report on the Tourism Economics website, and downloading the Itineraries of Impact deck.