Travel’s biggest spenders

THE big spenders of the Australian travel industry have boosted their advertising budgets as online retailers compete for space in mainstream media.

Figures obtained from media monitoring company Nielsen reveal the biggest advertising budgets in travel, where e-commerce firms now dominate spending - of the top 20 spenders, half are online travel aggregators.

Over the past year Imagine Cruising has become the biggest advertiser in the industry, having secured space and air time worth almost $54 million.

It was narrowly ahead of Ignite Travel which placed advertising worth $48 million, followed by Luxury Escapes ($36 million) and Trip A Deal ($34 million).

Flight Centre, in fifth place, was the biggest spender among bricks- and-mortar retailers, taking ads worth almost $31 million, placing it ahead of Webjet’s $30 million.

Among cruise and tour operators, APT was in seventh place ($29 million), just ahead of Scenic ($24 million).

Rounding out the top 10 are Helloworld ($24 million) and Trivago ($23 million).

The figures are based on rack- rate equivalents and do not include volume discounts.

They cover a period of almost one year, from 04 Jun 2017 to 19 May 2018.

Spending has increased significantly since the 2016 calendar year, when the previous most recent figures showed only four companies with budgets above $25 million.

In the past year seven entities have spent more than $25 million, while the total calculated ad spend in the travel industry reached almost $715 million - well above the $667 million of 2016.

Metro print remains travel’s preferred media, accounting for $388 million of total ad spending.