UK travel Ad Awareness: Top brands driving consumer attention
As the year turned, the UK travel sector entered its traditional peak advertising season, with leading brands competing to capture the attention of holidaymakers. Leveraging data from YouGov BrandIndex, we examine how some of the biggest players in the industry reached consumers through Ad Awareness, Buzz and Word-of-mouth Exposure.
Ad Awareness leaders: Which brands had the biggest gains?
Between November 14, 2024, and January 14, 2025, easyJet holidays emerged as the front-runner in Ad Awareness growth. The company registered the highest increase in Ad Awareness score in the last 2 months going from 5.3% on December 20 to 19.7% by January 7, a 14.4-point increase. This surge was likely fuelled by their “Big Orange Sale” promotion.
Other major players also saw significant gains. Booking.com, TUI, and Jet2holidays each improved their Ad Awareness by over 12 points during the New Year. At the turn of the new year, Jet2Holidays was leading the pack with a peak score of 30%. However, it was then overtaken by a gradual surge from TUI and then by Booking.com.
Trivago also made notable strides, increasing its Ad Awareness by 8.5 points—from 7.2% to 15.7%. This jump was partly attributed to their innovative AI-driven marketing campaign featuring global football icon Jürgen Klopp as brand ambassador.
Meanwhile, British Airways Holidays, Virgin Holidays, and Expedia experienced more modest gains, with their Ad Awareness rising between 4 and 11.7 points.
Buzz scores: Tracking brand sentiment
Beyond awareness, Buzz scores—which measure whether consumers have heard positive or negative news about a brand; positive news increases the metric score and negative news decreases the metric score—offers deeper insights. Booking.com and British Airways Holidays led in this category, with improvements of 9.6 and 9.4 points, respectively. Jet2holidays followed closely, gaining 8.4 points, likely powered by excitement around its 2025 travel deals.
TUI and Expedia also performed well, increasing their Buzz scores by 6.8 and 6.3 points, respectively. Virgin Holidays and Trivago showed relatively smaller improvements, with gains of 5.6 and 4.6 points. Notably, easyJet holidays experienced a dip into negative territory during this period but rebounded to end at 3.7 points on January 11.
Word-of-Mouth Exposure: Organic engagement on the rise
Word-of-Mouth (WOM) Exposure—a key metric of organic engagement—also showed promising trends during the festive season. TUI saw a sharp rise, with its WOM score climbing from 7.1 on December 23 to 16.1 by January 13, 2025. Similarly, British Airways Holidays and Jet2holidays saw its scores peak around January 13-14, marking a 6-point increase.
While easyJet holidays, Booking.com, and Virgin Holidays experienced fluctuations in WOM Exposure, all three brands recorded increases of approximately 5.5 points during this period.
The start of 2025 marked a fiercely competitive period for UK travel companies, with brands leveraging strategic advertising and engaging campaigns to attract consumers. As the year unfolds, it will be interesting to see how effectively these brands are able to convert awareness into tangible purchases.
In another article we analyse how successful they are at converting consumers, from Awareness to Consideration and finally Purchase Intent.
Methodology: BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. A brand’s Ad Awareness score is based on the question: “Which of the following consumer brands have you seen an advertisement for in the past two weeks?” and delivered as a percentage. The data is based on the interviews of British adults aged 18+ between 14 November 2024 and 14 January 2025. Learn more about BrandIndex.
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