It’s 7:30 PM on a Tuesday and you’re inching your way back home in a cab during peak traffic. The week has barely begun, but you’re already exhausted. Just then, Sunset Lover (Petit Biscuit) begins to play on your Spotify. 

Synth beats pulse softly in your ears, and suddenly, the traffic noises from outside fade. You’re on a terrace in Santorini, watching the last light dip below the caldera and the sky turning from gold to violet.

Before you know it, you’re checking flight prices.

For years, travel advertising has relied on static images and search ads. But today, discovery happens differently. Long before they type the name of a destination into Google, people are experiencing destinations through music, social media, and video content.

In fact, a psychology study published in Applied Research in Quality of Life found that anticipating a trip brings travelers more happiness than the trip itself. The planning stage—scrolling through travel blogs, curating playlists, watching videos—makes travel feel real before it actually begins. 

These early moments that influence how and where people travel constitute a huge opportunity for brands.

Finding travelers in the right moments

As travelers daydream, search, and plan, brands are finding unusual ways to be part of the experience. More and more of them are turning to Spotify, where the right audience is already engaging with travel-related content.

On Spotify, travel-related searches have grown 59% from Q1 to Q4 last year, a clear sign that music and audio are an important part of listeners' pre-trip inspiration. Listeners aren't passively browsing either—35M Spotify users have taken a vacation in the last 3-6 months and 7M have purchased air tickets online. These show real-time travel intent that brands can tap into.

Travel booking website Goibibo is an example of a brand that did this in an interesting way. They faced a challenge familiar to travel brands: people are eager to travel but overwhelmed by choices. Goibibo needed a way to capture attention during early leanback moments—not just when travelers were actively looking for deals.

Goibibo’s creative approach leveraged Bollywood nostalgia. Their ads had Kareena Kapoor Khan reprising her iconic role as Poo from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2001) and rating various hotel rooms in a quintessentially Poo manner.  The clever part is that “Bebo”, Kareena’s pet name, phonetically rhymes with Goibibo, underscoring the brand connection.

On Spotify, audio and video versions of the ads were delivered to audience segments who had shown an affinity for travel. To get visibility among fans of the celebrity, Goibibo also sponsored the editorial playlist Starring Kareena Kapoor. 

The campaign reached 5M unique users and a brand lift study done afterwards showed impressive outcomes: a 19-point lift in ad recall, 11-point lift in message association, and perhaps most importantly—a 7-point lift in intent.

As Sumit Bedi, vice president - marketing, at Goibibo says, “Reimagining Poo’s iconic sass in a travel setting made this campaign instantly relatable, and Spotify’s platform allowed us to bring that magic directly to the right audience in real time. We were able to personalise the brand message according to listeners' specific contextual cues, taking mass personalisation to a new level.”

Getting creative with travel messaging

Brands are also getting creative about how they reach travelers, not just in terms of the ideas but also the ad formats. While audio ads are non-intrusive and attention-catching, video ads offer storytelling opportunities and the use of stunning visuals to inspire wanderlust. These can be supported through display ads to keep the brand or message top-of-mind as users browse Spotify playlists. 

What makes this even more effective is Spotify's streaming intelligence that powers ads on the platform. According to Spotify data, 56% of users listen to music on their daily commute or during long journeys. Travel streams on Spotify peak in the afternoon and increase significantly on weekends. Such insights about user preferences and habits fuel advertising strategy on the platform and help brands sharply target ad delivery.

MakeMyTrip took advantage of Spotify's capabilities during a campaign to create awareness about their booking offers. They created 3D Audio ads that used evocative sounds of wind and waves to transport listeners to different exotic destinations. 

“We’ve always known that visuals inspire travel, but this campaign showed us how powerful sound can be,” says Abhinav Narula, vice president - marketing, at MakeMyTrip. “When listeners heard the rush of waves or the call of birds, they went from imagining a vacation to feeling it. This made them more likely to take action. On Spotify, we were not only able to reach a travel-enthusiastic audience but also engage them in an immersive and memorable way."

The campaign got great results, reaching 4.8M unique users with a benchmark-beating clickthrough rate of 0.31%. For its creative sound design, the campaign was recognised during Spotify Hits India 2024, a curated showcase of exceptional advertising on the platform.

Ultimately, travel brands aren’t just selling tickets or hotels—they’re shaping the experiences that lead people there. In a world where discovery happens long before a booking, the brands that make the biggest impact are the ones that become part of the journey before it even begins. 

Be where travel decisions take shape. Turn travel inspiration into action with Spotify Advertising. Know more on https://ads.spotify.com/en-IN/