Boomers plan on traveling—and they seem to have turned to Tripadvisor to do it. The travel review website tops the latest Ad Age-Harris Poll Boomer brand tracker, which ranks brands that made significant progress in gaining attention from boomers in the first quarter of 2024.
Even though the company ended its subscription service Tripadvisor Plus, the brand has remained resilient, thanks in part to Viator, which helps travelers book tours, sightseeing and activities. Tripadvisor acquired Viator in 2014. Of late, Viator has been working with ad agency Fig, which is using AI to help it sharpen its message, as recently reported by Bloomberg.
Other travel brands cracking the top 10 in the tracker include Yelp and Delta Air Lines. Wikipedia, which some travelers use for research, also made the list. Other brands included in the top 10 are Caesars Casino & Sportsbook, Sephora, Amazon Prime, Tempur-Pedic, Estée Lauder and Star Wars.
“TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Wikipedia are among the first places to start when planning any trip or experience, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that these three brands place within the top four surging brands among boomers in Q1—especially as many plan their escapist summertime travel during the heart of winter,” said Harris Poll CEO Will Johnson.
Also read: 20 brands catching Gen Z’s attention right now
Yelp saw record ad revenue in the last quarter of 2023, all part of the platform’s plan to emphasize its advertising business. Wikipedia released its top 25 most-viewed pages for 2023, the top one being OpenAI’s ChatGPT (which gained ground with Gen Z this quarter). The site has also been dealing with internal conflict around how the platform navigates niche topics like Wikipedia pages about roads and highways.
Delta generated positive buzz for offering a “path of totality” flight from Austin, Texas to Detroit for the recent eclipse. Based on the poll, the airline seems to have recovered with boomers from the backlash it got late last year when it announced changes to its loyalty program that would have had members spend more to reach certain statuses while cutting airport lounge access. It walked back some of the requirements after negative consumer feedback. Delta topped a poll published late last year from Harris Poll for Fast Company that scored the most preferred airlines. (It tied with Southwest and American Airlines among boomers—but was the top choice for millennials.)
Published quarterly, the Ad Age-Harris Poll rankings are sourced from The Harris Poll’s daily brand tracking tool, QuestBrand, to identify companies with the greatest quarter-over-quarter increase in equity among specific age cohorts—that is, how much a generation’s perception of these brands is changing from quarter to quarter. The baby boomer generation is generally defined as people born between 1946 and 1964.