Seeking after travel

Over the years, getting away, wanderlust, travel and adventure have been important themes dominating communicative storytelling at the airport. For here the messages meet a receptive audience, which is in an ebullient mood and glad to get inspiration for coming journeys. Frankfurt Airport is the most international of the German travel hubs and offers for these campaigns the ideal environment, open to the world.

Our passengers have high expectations and standards and are happy to spend. According to a survey of 2014 by the AWA (Allensbach Marketing and Advertising Analysis), 71 percent of passengers at Frankfurt Airport stay in hotels with at least 4 stars, have above-average interest in travel, and aim to learn more and more about other cultures. This goes hand in hand with a well above-average readiness to spend on holiday. On longer holiday trips 46 percent spend EUR 2,000 and more per person and journey, 18 percent even more than EUR 3,000. The focus is once more on spontaneous trips, too: and 58 percent of passengers surveyed (AWA 2014) like to make short trips, to visit special events or occasions. 

Travel operators like to address this active mindset most particularly. For example, Barbados, Beijing, Italy and Mauritius have taken advantage of Frankfurt Airport to draw attention on a large scale to their attractions as holiday destinations. Lufthansa, Germany’s biggest airline, also has close links to Germany’s biggest airport – and not just via the advertising in the Lufthansa Lounges. The airline is regularly represented at Fraport by powerful campaigns and eye-catching promotions including good-night stories, handkerchiefs for emotional reunions and goodbyes, and much more.

So it is no surprise that over the last five years the tourism sector has always been a major factor in overall revenues at Frankfurt Airport, with a share of 11.5 percent. The airlines, the car-hire firms, the companies, operators and associations in the holiday and travel sector are still taking things conservatively: the share of analogue advertising scores is unusually high, at some 56 percent. 30 percent of campaigns are run digitally – and the trend is upward, as everywhere. The share of promotions amounts to 14 percent. King-size light boxes are the most popular advertising vehicle in this sector, followed by flags, promotion points and wall wraps.