In the age of ‘Euro Summer’, travel is a narrative—not a funnel
As another European summer comes to a close, Helena Barroso Zarco, regional vice president of customer success APJ at impact.com, explains how marketers can’t afford to ignore the cultural shift: today’s travellers are turning every trip into a personal narrative.
Every winter my Instagram feed turns into a European passport. Aperol clinks in Amalfi, there’s rosé all day in Santorini, and sails billow at sunset off the Croatian coast.
What once looked like casual holiday snaps now resemble full-blown editorial shoots—depending on the friend, anything from Vogue to Monster Children. But behind the curated posts and wanderlust reels lies a shift marketers can’t afford to ignore: today’s travellers are turning every trip into a personal narrative.
For marketers in travel—and adjacent lifestyle categories like fashion, beauty, and wellness—it’s a reminder that the most effective campaigns now feel less like marketing and more like discovery. That shift is not only disrupting the traditional funnel, but also forcing a fundamental rethink of how and where marketing budgets are spent.
In short, marketing as we know it is undergoing a reckoning.
Nice one Helena! Advertisers sometimes live in a bubble and believe that the only way is big ad campaigns. The art of tailoring creative and pursing collaborative partnerships is rarely perfected.