As International Arrivals Drop, Here's Five Ways OOH Can Help Travel Destinations & Tourist Attractions Stay Busy This Summer

May 1, 2025

For tourist attractions and travel destinations reliant on visitors from outside the United States, the coming summer looks challenging. Billions of dollars of tourism revenue are at stake as international travelers rethink U.S. trips in the face of tariff hostilities and harsh immigration enforcement.

The stats are sobering: total international visitor arrivals were down 12% year over year for the month of March, with the sharpest declines coming from the Caribbean (-26%) and Central America (-24%) (SOURCE: International Trade Administration). It’s especially dire news in Orlando, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, each of which gets more than a tenth of its visitation from overseas. If you’re a tourist attraction in one of those destinations – or if you’re the destination itself – how do you offset the sudden, unexpected loss of the critical international segment?

 
Fortunately, Americans’ appetite for domestic travel remains seemingly insatiable. Intent is up two points year over year, with 44% planning a summer vacation at an average cost of $3,861. When you add in those visiting friends and family and those traveling for events, 87% of Americans anticipate spending at least one night away from home this summer (SOURCE: NerdWallet).

Also fortunate: out of home advertising can help travel and tourism businesses pivot towards those nearby audiences. Here are five ways how to increase domestic visitation using OOH.

Seek out staycationers where they work and live.

The staycation is back in vogue – as if it ever left! 38% of would-be summer travelers are trading the high skies for the open road, opting for drivable destinations (SOURCE: NerdWallet). Even for those who proudly proclaim “I live where you vacation,” it can be easy to overlook or dismiss gems right underneath your nose. Out of home can make them undeniable instead.


Sand Valley Resort in Wisconsin recently ran a Station Domination campaign in nearby Chicago, impacting the affluent suburban audience who rides Metra commuter rail – exactly the guests who fill its rooms and enjoy its amenities. Resorts, destinations, and roadside attractions that currently capture the attention of visitors with an advertising presence along tourism corridors should shift their attention to residential neighborhoods and transit media instead.

When it comes to that local-guest pivot, our most notable success story is that of Wild Florida, a longtime OUTFRONT client whose most recent STUDIOS-designed campaign drove over 14,000 visits to the park (SOURCE: OUTFRONT Mobile).

 

Pinpoint your target audience in your feeder markets with smartSCOUT.

Beyond your own backyard, you probably already know who your guests and customers are, and where they come from. Now is the time to lean into that knowledge. With smartSCOUT™, our proprietary data platform, we can identify exactly which of our 500,000+ canvases are most likely to impact the audience that matters most to you.

Let’s look at Orlando, for example. Its top feeder markets, as measured by air passenger arrivals, include New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and Atlanta (SOURCE: Orlando Aviation Authority) – all cities well-served by OUTFRONT. Orlando’s family-friendly attractions can lean into those markets by advertising on the specific billboards and transit media in those cities that over-index the most for audiences of parents. By leveraging our sophisticated audience targeting capabilities, advertisers can ensure that every impression matters more.

Deliver the deals consumers crave, but also the experiences they value.

More than nine in ten say that they’re taking action to save on their summer travel spending – so this is an audience responsive to deals. The top money-saving actions they’re taking include choosing a hotel based on price rather than amenities (40%), choosing a flight based on price rather than convenience (34%), staying with friends or family instead of a hotel (33%), choosing a flight based on price rather than airline preference (20%), and not checking bags (14%) (SOURCE: NerdWallet).

Conversely, that same nine in ten say they’re willing to pay a premium for things like complimentary breakfast (41%), convenient location (37%), better amenities (36%), and kitchenettes (27%) at a hotel, and convenience (30%), seat selection (26%), and extra legroom (25%) on flights. Sustainability and flexible cancellation are also important to travelers (SOURCE: NerdWallet).

Travelers are prioritizing what matters to them the most and identifying what they’re willing to trade down on. Advertisers that can best articulate their value proposition position themselves to win.

Add QRad to your campaign and engage travelers with an interactive content experience.

Every vacation is somebody’s main character moment – and nothing sucks would-be travelers into the story like QRad, the cutting-edge interactive technology from XLabs that puts audiences in control, letting them transform our screens with just a scan. Aruba Tourism recently took over NYC with a Times Square campaign where passersby who scanned the code could then select from different Aruba experiences, such as relaxation, romance, food, and family – and then watch as that experience plays out on the oversized digital screens for all to see.

 
On a smaller scale, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts used QRad technology on Liveboards throughout the Boston subway system in order to illustrate the breadth covered by its multiple exhibitions.

Seize every moment by incorporating real-time triggers or live data into your digital out of home campaign.

 
Digital out of home also offers advertisers the opportunity to create contextual relevance by powering a campaign with data. One way is by incorporating real-time data directly into the creative of the ad. Visit Orlando did this to great effect with a wintertime digital billboard campaign in its cold-weather feeder markets, including the current temperature in Orlando right on the ads. The second way is to set up data-triggers that deliver different variations of the creative based on real-time conditions – for example, showing one version when it’s raining and another when the sun is out.

Combining real-time data with deals and offers can be a particularly powerful synergy – imagine an outdoor attraction being able to offer discounts on days when inclement weather discourages crowds, or a hotel being able to change messaging based on its real-time occupancy rate in order to fill rooms at the last minute. Our XPress dynamic content platform – another one of the ad tech creations of our XLabs team – makes creating and deploying data-infused campaigns simple.

Do your media plans include out of home? They should! Contact OUTFRONT today and let’s partner on a campaign that’ll keep guests coming all summer long.

Author: Jay Fenster, Marketing Manager @ OUTFRONT

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