From Awareness to Arrivals: A Strategic Marketing Framework for Tourism Arrivals Growth
Tourism boards are graded in arrivals but buy media in impressions. Closing the gap between the two is the biggest lever most destinations have not yet pulled.
Every tourism board asked for arrivals. Ask what its media money is buying and the answer comes in a different currency: reach, impressions, video views. The two never meet.
Behind the arrivals target sit the numbers that fund the board: foreign-currency receipts, jobs, and the country's standing in the markets it courts. The gap between what the board is graded on and what it buys is the quiet problem in destination marketing, and a slowing market is about to make it expensive.
Growth is getting harder to come by.
UN Tourism counted an estimated 1.52 billion international arrivals in 2025, up 4%. Arrivals grew just 0.4% in the first half of 2026 (UN Tourism, 2026).At 4% a destination hits its target by keeping its share. At 0.4% the pool is barely growing, so a destination grows mainly by taking share from another. That is a marketing job, and most destinations do it in the wrong place and language.
Where is an arrival actually decided?
Not at the border. Expedia Group's Path to Purchase study put the average consideration window at 71 days, 33 of inspiration and 38 of research and planning, then another 73 days between booking and travelling. Close to 60% had no single destination in mind when they first decided to take a trip (Expedia Group, 2023).
So the visitor counted next quarter began choosing five months earlier, at home in Jakarta. The arrival happens in the destination's country; the decision happened in the traveller's.
The missing middle.
Most destination media plans put money at the two ends and little between. At one end is awareness, bought by channel: a global brand campaign on television, outdoor and international media, one idea translated and run everywhere. At the other end is digital and social, bought for clicks and bookings in the last days before purchase.
The 38 days in the middle, when a traveller is building a shortlist, get the least attention and the least localisation. Yet that is where the destination is chosen or dropped. The reason is structural: awareness is planned by channel and performance by platform. The best-funded boards now localise the face of the campaign: a different celebrity for India, China and Japan (Tourism Australia, 2025; Dubai DET, 2025). Far fewer localise the media plan through the weeks when the shortlist is made. Almost none measure it.
Underneath the top-end buy sits an assumption: one international publisher, in English, reaches the world. It does not. Ethnologue puts English speakers at about 1.5 billion, under a fifth of the world's population, and most of them speak it as a second language (Ethnologue). The Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian and Saudi traveller plans a holiday in their own language, on platforms a London or New York newsroom never reaches. An English-language global buy reaches the English-speaking minority in each market. The same instinct buys a football shirt and calls it global reach.
From awareness to arrivals.
From Awareness to Arrivals is Multiverse Partners' planning framework for tourism boards: each source market is treated as its own four-stage funnel, with a measure at each stage that moves before arrivals do. Brand-health research says which stage is leaking in each market; every measure is read against competing destinations; three disciplines follow.
Stage | The question to answer | What tells you early |
Awareness | Do travellers here know we exist, in their own language? | Qualified reach; prompted awareness |
Intent | Are we on their shortlist? | Share of destination search and flight search against competing destinations |
Booking | Are the people considering us actually converting? | Look-to-book ratio; forward bookings; airline loads |
Arrival | Did they come, and did they spend? | Arrivals; nights; receipts |
Plan by country, and go deep. A plan organised as TV, digital and social answers the publisher's question. A plan organised as Korea, India and Saudi Arabia answers the destination's: how many more arrivals can this market yield, and which media, in which language, will move the traveller there?
Fund the middle. Shift weight from the two ends into the research window and tell the brand story there in the traveller's language, as answers to the traveller's questions rather than a translated anthem. It is usually the cheapest arrivals a destination can buy.
Report intent monthly and arrivals quarterly. Search and flight-search signals move weeks ahead of the immigration count. A board that sees intent rising can hold its nerve; one that sees it falling can act before the quarter is gone. Brand USA publishes incremental visits, visitor spend per marketing dollar and returns by region (Brand USA, 2026). It is rare. It should be the standard.
Can a media partner guarantee arrivals?
No, and any partner or agency who says otherwise should be asked how. Visas, airlift and geopolitics sit outside a marketer's control. A media partner controls whether the right traveller sees the destination, in their language, on a platform they trust, and whether the intent that creates is measured. An impression can be bought from a machine. An arrival cannot. When the rest of the system is ready, arrivals follow.
Where Multiverse Partners fits.
Multiverse Partners is a Singapore-headquartered global media buying partner for tourism boards, airlines and government clients, and a member of the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
One mandate runs across around 50 markets, with direct relationships at over 20 of the world's largest publishers and 100-plus local media owners. Every plan is built country by country, in the traveller's language and on their platforms, and reported from awareness through to arrival, so a board sees travel intent move each month rather than an impression count. Destinations whose 2027 targets depend on markets they cannot yet see clearly are welcome to start the conversation. Arrivals, not impressions.
Frequently asked questions.
What is the From Awareness to Arrivals framework? A planning framework from Multiverse Partners for tourism boards and airlines. Each source market is treated as its own four-stage funnel (awareness, intent, booking, arrival), brand-health research shows which stage is leaking in each market, and every stage carries a leading measure read against competing destinations.
Why plan tourism media by country rather than by channel? Because arrivals are decided in the source market, in its language, on its platforms, months before travel. A plan organised by country answers how many more arrivals a market can yield and what will move the traveller there; a plan organised by channel answers the publisher's question.
What should a tourism board ask its media partner to report? One page per source market: awareness, share of travel intent against competing destinations, look-to-book and forward bookings, and arrivals. Intent monthly, arrivals quarterly.
Can a media buying partner guarantee tourism arrivals? No. Visas, airlift and geopolitics sit outside a marketer's control. A partner controls whether the right traveller sees the destination, in their language, on a platform they trust, and whether the intent that creates is measured.
About Multiverse Partners.
Multiverse Partners Network is a Singapore-headquartered Global Media Buying Partner serving travel, tourism, aviation and government/public and enterprise sector clients across 50+ markets. Founder-led and senior-run, it operates on a one-brief, one-contract, one-invoice model with a dedicated China Desk.
Contact Multiverse Partners
Talk to us about your global media buying strategy:
Basil Chua, Managing Director, basil@multiversepartners.com
Eunice Goh, Chief Client Officer, eunice@multiversepartners.com
General enquiries: hello@multiversepartners.com
Multiverse Partners Network Pte Ltd. Registered office: 8 Wilkie Road 03-01, Wilkie Edge, Singapore 228095.
Website: www.multiversepartners.com
Sources
UN Tourism (2026). International tourist arrivals up 4% in 2025. World Tourism Barometer, January 2026. https://www.untourism.int/news/international-tourist-arrivals-up-4-in-2025-reflecting-strong-travel-demand-around-the-world
UN Tourism (2026). International tourism holds steady with 0.4% growth in first half of 2026 as Middle East conflict and rising costs weigh on momentum. World Tourism Barometer, 17 September 2026. https://www.untourism.int/news/international-tourism-holds-steady-with-04-growth-in-first-half-of-2026-as-middle-east-conflict-and-rising-costs-weigh-on-momentum
Expedia Group Media Solutions (2023). The Path to Purchase: Uncovering how travelers plan and book online. https://www.expedia.com/newsroom/eg-path-to-purchase-research and full report https://go2.advertising.expedia.com/rs/185-EIA-216/images/Expedia_Group-Path2Purchase-2023.pdf
Tourism Australia (2025). Come and Say G'day, Chapter Two, as reported by AdNews, 4 August 2025. https://www.adnews.com.au/campaigns/come-and-say-g-day-chapter-two-hops-onto-the-world-stage-via-droga5
Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (2025). Dubai, Ready for a Surprise, with Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma, as reported by Gulf News, 2025. https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/inside-dubais-a-list-tourism-campaigns-virat-kohli-and-anushka-sharma-join-shah-rukh-khan-saif-ali-khan-1.500151529
Ethnologue, Languages of the World. SIL International. What are the most spoken languages in the world? https://www.ethnologue.com/insights/most-spoken-language/ (speaker totals in the Ethnologue 200 table)
Brand USA (2026). FY2025 Economic Impact Study (Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company). https://www.thebrandusa.com/archive/brand-usas-fy25-economic-impact-study/
