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Hotel Marketing 5.15 | BCG's $15T leisure forecast, photo budget prep, and immersive brand activations

BCG’s leisure forecast, additional Q3 dates to watch, creative summer pop-ups, and a smarter way to plan your 2026 photo budget.

Author

Rachel Watroba
July 07, 2025

The Hotel Marketing 5.15 | Weekly Brief: July 7, 2025

Welcome to week three, edition three, of The Hotel Marketing 5.15. These are probably becoming longer than 5 minutes to read, but you’re realistically scanning the hotel marketing takeaways and saving tabs to read…someday.

Inside: a $15 trillion leisure forecast, an AI reality check, travel terminology from The New York Times, audits to help align photography budgets to revenue drivers, and the latest activations and pop-ups for inspiration.

If you find something useful in this edition, forward it to a hotel marketing friend, especially if they’re an owner or an overworked DOSM suddenly without a marketing lead and likes hiring interim, resourceful people on short notice (me).

Thanks for reading.

Unpacking the $15 Trillion Opportunity in Leisure Travel | BCG

Five Traveler Archetypes | BCG

A new report published by Boston Consulting Group’s Travel Division dives into the continuous growth potential of the leisure market, with emerging markets making up a large percentage of the potential growth through 2040.

Hotel Marketing Takeaways:

The report includes some compelling graphs that can help validate trends you are seeing in your leisure market share. It is also a timely reminder to review your current top countries by traffic, especially from a digital visitor perspective, and explore opportunities to expand cultural relevance, language translation, and sales enablement tools. This could include video content and informational assets for travel advisors who specialize in the emerging markets where you anticipate future growth.

AI Traffic Has Increased 9.7x in the Past Year | AHREFS

Percentage of Website Traffic by Source | AHREFS

“I think site owners run the risk of missing the forest for the trees by heavily focusing on AI search right now and ignoring Google Search…the fact of the matter is that Google still drives the most traffic to sites by a mile.”

Glenn Gabe, President, G-Squared Interactive LLC

Hotel Marketing Takeaways:

While AI is taking over headlines, Google still drives the primary share of traffic.

Review your organic rankings for your brand name and optimize those sites that rank in the top 3 pages of the SERPs first.

New Travel Terminology: Land Snorkeling? Townsizing? A User’s Guide to the Latest Travel Lingo | New York Times (limited articles free to read, sign in required)

The latest travel lingo, as reported by The New York Times, includes a mix of fresh terms and a few familiar ones making a comeback. My family is participating in the Live Tourism trend with a trip to Colorado and Red Rocks Amphitheatre later this month, so the timing felt right to highlight this article.

Hotel Marketing Takeaways:

The infographic above highlights a few of the terms featured in the NYT article, but there are additional ones at the link, which is worth the read. Is your hotel featuring any of these current trends? If not, does it make sense to in a way that feels organic?

If your property is partaking in any of these trends, would love for you to reply and let me know for a future follow-up feature in this newsletter.

Additional News Clips:

  • Weekends boost US hotel performance in final full week of June | CoStar

Job Postings

Career News

  • US Job Openings Climb to Highest Since November, Led by Leisure | MSN

Upcoming Dates

Cogwheel Marketing hosts their monthly Collaboration Call on July 14 at 1pm EST, an open invite for hotel marketers to connect, share feedback, and brainstorm with peers. Join me and other hotel marketers as Cogwheel Marketing leads the call. For an official invite, email [email protected] and tell them I sent you!

Awards

Conferences

Holidays and Activations

Plan Now, Shoot Later: A Pre-Budget Photography Checklist

Align Your Photography Budget With Revenue Drivers

Before budget season officially begins, audit your digital assets. Identify photography gaps, especially of your hero images, renovated spaces, seasonal experiences, and underrepresented demographics.

Some prompts to ask as you audit your photography:

  • Are your top-performing images still accurate, or have you been using the same hero image for the last 5 years?

  • Are there missed opportunities in your visual storytelling (spa, wellness, families, food & beverage)?

  • Are user-generated visuals outweighing brand assets in your search results?

Use this audit to build a strategic case for your 2026 photography budget. Pair performance insights with visual gaps ("Our bed and breakfast package drives 30% of Q1 leisure bookings but has no hero imagery"), and layer in usage data to strengthen your case:

  • What percentage of your photo library has actually been used in high-value media placements?

  • Of your top 10 hero images, how many are more than three - five years old?

  • Which packages or experiences account for the highest revenue but have the fewest supporting visuals?

Don't forget to incorporate qualitative feedback from PR partners and editors, like this journalist on LinkedIn who sighs while passing on your story because, once again, "this is the best photo we have."

Here are a few pop-ups and activations that caught my eye this week. While many pop-ups are being announced for the summer, these stood out for their creativity and potential to inspire. Hopefully, they’ll spark a few ideas for you too:

  • House 44 | a SOHO House, F1 Paddock Club, and Lewis Hamilton pop-up.

    • This one caught my eye for a few reasons. It’s timely, layered, and incredibly well executed. I saw the F1 movie with my family this weekend and was intrigued by the collaboration that brought the movie to the big screens: Apple, Formula 1, and Lewis Hamilton. That same spirit of cross-industry partnership is present here in House 44, a luxury pop-up that blends sport, style, and immersive experience. (h/t to Zac Des of Dreamweaver Group)

  • The Summer Terrace of The Ritz Paris | The Ritz has transformed its world-class brand into a seasonal sensory experience, including distinctive location at Place Vendôme, lush design, tailored menu, and curated playlists.

  • Carvel’s Ice Cream Dispensing Billboard | celebrating their 90th anniversary with an interactive activation.

  • Burberry at The Standard Ibiza | a number of fashion brands are taking over luxury hotels this summer, particularly in europe, but most apply a similar concept of branded loungers and towels. burberry expands their rooftop takeover of the standard ibiza, adding in photo booths, curated cocktails, and renowned djs, making it a temporary destination to see and be seen.

  • Omni San Diego’s Tiki Social | a summer pop-up with cocktail historian and mixologist Jeff “Beachbum” Berry.

Because not everything fits in a box, all of the extras that I have bookmarked in my brain:

Hotel Marketing Takeaways:

For pre-opening and marketing & sales, immersive technology continues to evolve and can be used to help sell experiences that are still concepts. Omni Punta de Mita did a great job of turning renderings into videos for a resort that hasn’t broken ground yet.

  • With Prime Day here, I’m revisiting a few books that have shaped how I approach hotel marketing. From strategy and storytelling to mindset and leadership, these are titles I’ve read, re-read, and often recommend when onboarding marketing managers. View More.

Based on a communication method by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, the 5.15 is a weekly format designed to synthesize key insights in 15 minutes or less and be read in five. This newsletter applies the same principle to hotel marketing: concise, actionable trends and opportunities curated for industry professionals.

ADCOTO Hotel Marketing partners with luxury hotels during moments of transition, including openings, leadership gaps, or times when everything needs to keep moving without missing a beat. From strategy to execution, I help maintain momentum, align agencies, and keep your marketing engine running smoothly.

If you’re navigating a gap in marketing leadership or planning ahead for a transition, I’d be happy to talk through what support might look like.

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