The 25 travel and hospitality digital marketing campaigns that define modern category storytelling — from Airbnb "Live There" to Delta "Keep Climbing" to Tourism Australia "Dundee" to GetYourGuide. Plus the four patterns the winners share.
April 2017: United was in crisis after the Dr. Dao removal. Delta executed the canonical competitive comms move — indirect contrast, no direct attack, reinforcement of its own service narrative. The case study in competitive crisis capitalization.
On August 8, 2016, a single piece of switchgear failed at Delta's Atlanta operations center and grounded the airline. The "power outage" framing did not survive the trade-press fact-check. The case is now the structural precursor to Delta's 2024 CrowdStrike response.
Delta Air Lines is the highest-revenue U.S. carrier, the most-rewarded loyalty program in commercial aviation, and the case study every other airline brand has been measured against since the 2008 Northwest merger. The EPR master file.
In November 2009 this publication argued business travel was dead. Seventeen years later, almost every prediction in the original piece has been contradicted by evidence. The carriers that bet on business travel's return won the decade. The carriers that bet against it are restructuring to catch up.