Travel brochures are known for showcasing beautiful travel destinations, creating wanderlust, and providing the most important details that will entice travelers to plan their vacations and holidays. Whether you are a hotel, resort, Airbnb host, tour group, or other travel-related organization, the travel and hospitality industry uses travel brochures to create excitement, encourage bookings and develop a demand for the destination. Travel brochures are no longer just for large corporate hotels or major destinations and resorts. All types of travel-related businesses should include a travel brochure in their content strategy and plan. Let’s go over some of the basics of making a beautiful travel brochure, from what to include, design ideas, how to transform it online, and the best ways to share the travel brochure.
Travel brochures are always in demand! The travel brochure is a key marketing piece for you to showcase your destination. Feature the best photos, highlight amenities, local sights, and landmarks, and really demonstrate what sets your destination apart from others. The travel brochure is your chance to tell an in-depth story of your destination and all that it has to offer. You may already have a website, social media presence, and tons of content on the internet, but the travel brochure brings it all together like a master presentation. Create a travel brochure and keep it updated as it will be an essential collateral piece among your many other marketing materials.
The travel brochure should be the centerpiece of your marketing materials. For hotels, resorts, Airbnbs, and other accommodations, you should include a variety of assets to showcase the rooms, and amenities such as the pool, outdoor space, restaurants, lobby, and spa. Make sure the images and videos are high-resolution in order to engage the reader and capture their attention. The photos and video should showcase the best that your property or destination has to offer while also conveying the style of the location. The best photography and video will also convey how the space makes the guest feel — whether it’s intended to be calming, cozy, energetic, exciting, productive, etc.
In addition to the visual assets, a really well-developed travel brochure will provide a comprehensive description of the destination, including specific location details, features of the destination, unique amenities, and any other details that set your destination apart. Include a map marking your hotel or Airbnb location in relation to popular landmarks to demonstrate their proximity.
Keep your travel brochure current and relevant by incorporating real reviews and references to your destination on social media. Add posts, photos or comments from past guests, or well-known accounts as a way to really set your travel brochure apart. Of course, these content pieces should be kept updated, as reviews that are a few years old really lose their effect!
The travel brochure can also be a resource for your prospective guests. If you’re a hotel owner or Airbnb host, think about local activities and recommendations that will help your guests make the most of their stay. If they use your brochure in their planning, the chances they will trust you for their accommodation is much more likely. For tourist boards and local governments, a travel brochure is a way to put your community on the map, and establish your content as the go-to resource.
A really effective travel brochure is a multi-page publication that should look like a magazine or sleek flipbook. The front cover should entice the reader with an inspiring and eye-catching photo, bold logo, or text of the destination’s name. The following pages should feature the additional photos and destination descriptions in an easy-to-read manner. Don’t use tiny text, be succinct with descriptions but don’t forget to include the most exciting and interesting details. List out key features of the property or destination so the reader’s main takeaways are your best-selling features.
For today’s largely digital world your travel brochure should also be available online and easily viewed on any device type — from laptop to tablet to smartphone. You may have created the travel brochure in PowerPoint, Word, or using Canva or Adobe InDesign, and saved it as a PDF. Don’t keep your travel brochure stuck in the large and boring PDF file format though. Ensure your travel brochure really stands out by transforming the file into a beautiful and interactive digital flipbook. The digital travel brochure will become one of your hardest-working marketing materials. Now you can embed it on your website, share with email subscribers, post on social media, and easily distribute it to prospective travelers, business accounts, travel agents, and event planners.
There are many common applications that can be used to design and build a travel brochure including PowerPoint, Google Slides, Word, or Keynote. Build out the multi-page document by adding text, images, photos, video, data points, and your branding. Consider using additional design tools to really create a memorable travel brochure such as Adobe InDesign, the brochure template on Issuu, or a design site like Canva. Draft the text for the travel brochure in a word document first, so you can really hone in on the exact language, descriptions, and amenities you want to include. Once the copy is ready to go, then you can add it to the pages of the brochure to maximize grabbing the attention of your readers.
Once you have your travel brochure created, engage a few colleagues, partners, or even customers to review the content. Incorporate their suggestions, plus ask them to look for typos or formatting concerns. It’s always helpful to engage others for a round or two of reviews. The final travel brochure will be an even more effective marketing piece as a result.
Designing, copywriting, editing, and developing a travel brochure requires a ton of work and resources. Oftentimes you have been working in a variety of applications from Powerpoint, Word, Adobe InDesign, and others for various steps of the projects. These different applications and formats work well for the creative process and for editing but are lacking when it comes time to actually reach your prospective guests and visitors. You want your travel brochure to really draw in the reader, plus include interactive elements that will enhance your travel brochure’s storytelling too. Issuu’s easy-to-use digital publishing platform creates beautiful digital travel brochures that really help your destination shine.
Once your content is ready, join Issuu and upload your file to the publisher’s homepage. First Issuu will turn the travel brochure file into a flipbook with professional-looking pages including the tactile page flips. Next, you can really enhance the travel brochure by adding interactive web links to more destination resources, a booking page, or directly to a contact page for the guests to ask questions or check availability. Video content is also extremely powerful and engaging, especially for travel content. Issuu makes it easy to embed videos right in your travel brochure, whether it’s a hotel tour, destination highlight reel, or welcome message from the hotel staff. Video content really draws a reader in. Lastly, share your travel brochure using the fullscreen sharing feature in Issuu that removes all distractions to keep your brochure front and center for the prospective traveler.
The Issuu digital publishing platform makes the process of turning your travel brochure into a sleek digital experience fun and easy. Issuu streamlines the distribution of your travel brochure as well. Once your travel brochure is ready to capture the attention of all the prospective guests, you can embed your brochure right onto your website. Issuu makes it easy to just copy and paste the embed code — no engineering skills needed. You can easily customize your travel brochure to match your website too with an added logo, plus a branded background incorporating your brand colors.
If you need to share the travel brochure with prospective guests, there is no need to deal with large, clunky files. Instead, just email, text, or direct message the link from Issuu to your travel brochure. Issuu also has you covered, as your travel brochure is already optimized for viewing on all screen sizes. Issuu puts your travel brochure right at your fingertips and you can seize every opportunity to connect with prospective travelers at any point in their trip research, planning, and booking stage. You’ve spent many hours building this travel brochure, Issuu ensures it’s ready to reach as many people as possible!
We’ve discussed everything you need to know on how to make a successful travel brochure. We know that creating the content won’t be easy, but a travel brochure is a key marketing piece that you want to have ready to share with prospective travelers who are considering your hotel, resort, destination, Airbnb, or other travel-related experience. Start developing and designing your travel brochure today and then let Issuu transform into an online publication that is ready to share with the world!
Inspire wanderlust and bookings for your travel destination when you join Issuu to create a beautiful travel brochure that engages prospective travelers.