I am delighted to report that ABTA’s annual “Travel with confidence” consumer advertising campaign, which ran throughout January and February, has once again proven to be very successful, reaching over 7m consumers.

As with previous campaigns, our main objectives were to raise brand awareness of ABTA, so holidaymakers book their trips with an ABTA travel company; to raise understanding of ABTA’s offer of support, protection and expertise, so holidaymakers understand the benefits the organisation offers beyond financial protection; and to promote the “Travel with confidence” message.

This year’s campaign strapline was: “Be Smart. Always Book With an ABTA Travel Company”. The advertising creative focused on the rise of holiday booking fraud and the importance of booking with a reputable travel company.

As our highest profile promotional campaign of the year, we wanted to ensure we were reaching the right audience, at the right time and promoting the right message. Following the success of the video element of last year’s campaign, this year we focused more of our efforts on social media advertising and activity in order to maximise the reach and engagement of our media-buying budget, along with an insert in The Sunday Times.

As well as reaching over 7m consumers, the campaign helped to drive traffic to abta.com. January 2017 saw a 50% increase in traffic to the homepage compared to January 2016 and traffic to our “Find a Member” page was also up by 15% in the same time period.

In our Member survey last year, you highlighted that promoting the benefits of ABTA travel companies to consumers was extremely important to your business, and through this year’s campaign we’ve done just that. As we head into the summer season I hope you will continue to support our advertising and PR campaigns through your own channels – together we can spread the message far and wide. Look out for an ABTA Today special after Easter that will have more details about how you can support our summer campaigns.

Wishing you all a happy Easter!

Mark Tanzer, Chief Executive