For many travellers, the holiday experience starts long before a flight is booked. Social media fuels early excitement, offering a space to explore destinations, imagine hotel stays and picture poolside drinks.
For airlines, and other brands focused on travel and experiences, understanding when, where and why people engage with this content is essential to staying visible throughout the entire travel journey.
It’s important to understand that engagement doesn’t happen at one moment, it occurs before the trip, during the holiday itself, and long after travellers return home.
Pre-Travel Behaviour: The Most Active Stage
The pre-travel period is where airlines see the highest level of social engagement. Travellers use Instagram, TikTok, Facebook groups, YouTube and Pinterest to search for inspiration, compare airlines and look for practical advice.
Engagement peaks one to three months before travel, when people are still in the dreaming stage, and intensifies as the departure date approaches.
This is when travellers check reviews, search for promotions and consume packing tips or seat advice. Brands that deliver eye-catching visuals and clear, helpful content during this stage build early trust and influence traveller decisions.
Bonus: Discover how to build a killer marketing strategy for a travel brand.
On-Holiday Behaviour: The Immersion Stage
Once travellers arrive, social media becomes a real-time storytelling platform. People post room tours, beaches, food content, excursions and sunset shots, using Instagram, TikTok and Facebook to share the highlights.
This content is authentic and emotional, perfect for capturing positive sentiment. Throughout the trip, travellers continue to document their moments, often tagging airlines and tourism brands. By being discoverable through location tags, hashtags or mentions, airlines benefit from organic visibility while the traveller is fully immersed in the experience.
For brands looking to make the most of the immersion stage, a good bet is working with travel influencers to create relatable, authentic content.
Post-Trip Behaviour: The Second Engagement Spike
When the holiday ends, social media sees a renewed burst of travel content. Travellers curate their best footage into Instagram Reels, TikTok edits and YouTube vlogs.
They share photo dumps, post recommendations and sometimes review their flight experience. This content usually appears within the first few days after returning home, creating a second wave of visibility.
For airlines, this is a valuable moment to encourage user-generated content, gather reviews and reinforce positive customer experiences.
Why This Matters for Airline Marketers
Understanding these behavioural stages allows airlines to tailor content to real customer habits.
Pre-travel content drives decision-making, on-holiday engagement boosts brand presence and post-trip sharing strengthens long-term affinity.
Brands that align their social strategy with these natural rhythms stay relevant throughout the entire travel cycle, creating more opportunities for loyalty, visibility and meaningful audience connection.
View the Full Visual Breakdown
If you’d like a quick, visual summary of exactly how travellers engage at each stage of their journey, don’t miss the infographic below!
It breaks down the platforms, behaviours and opportunities at a glance, perfect for planning your next social campaign.
