Cultural Moments: Spring 2025 YouTube Travel Trends
Everyone in the ad industry is talking about “cultural moments” lately, and how brands should take advantage of them. In fact, YouTube just rolled out some interesting solutions related to cultural moments at Brandcast. Cultural moments can be anything from a specific event like the Super Bowl, or a season or period of increased consumer activity. Travel is one such activity, and with the peak travel season upon us, Pixability is here to share key insights into what’s trending as consumers plan for their upcoming getaways this spring and summer. After all, just identifying a “cultural moment” isn’t enough, you have to provide timely insights into what consumers are doing (and why that matters for advertisers) in this year’s version of that moment.
Using our proprietary technology and deep channel data, our talented insights team poured over YouTube search, content, and creator trends to find some interesting patterns of growing demand and decline within the travel space.
Before we dive deeper into more of the specific trends, it’s worth noting that with all of the recent change happening in the US, we have seen a slight decrease in international travelers booking trips to the US. Simultaneously, we’ve seen a slight increase in US travelers booking international travel, perhaps in an effort to get ‘out of dodge’ during this state of volatility:
- According to Google flight data from February to May 2025, there were –14.3% fewer international flight queries to a US destination versus this same time period in 2024
- During the same February to May window, there were +5.8% more flight queries from the US to International destinations versus in 2024
That said, overall travel searches were up +16% YoY from 1/18-4/18, meaning consumers are making more plans to travel than they were during this same 90-day period last year.
Regardless of where travelers are booking their trips, there are some more specific consumer trends that should be noted within this cultural moment of spring/summer travel. Namely, searches for travel bags have grown significantly over recent months:
- Searches for “travel bags” on YouTube overall grew a whopping +5000% from January to April, versus the prior 90-day period
- Travel bag related views on YouTube grew +38% versus this same January to April window in 2024
From this trending search, a select few brands topped the list for most commonly searched travel bags:
- Popular brands like Aer, Beis, Peak Design, and Tomtoc ranked at the top of this +5000% increase in travel bag searches, with top-searched bags including:
Of these trending products, it’s not a coincidence that many tout similar variations of the travel bag solution everyone seems to be buzzing about: Vacuum sealed travel bags that allow more room for more items to fit in small suitcases. This may be due to more consumers looking to take more flexible and affordable day or weekend trips, which would require cheaper, smaller bags. Or maybe travelers just need a more efficient carry-on for the bigger trips.
As for the YouTube travel creators promoting these products and contributing to their growth, there are some clear ‘rising stars’ that are worth highlighting. Some of the most recent high-growth travel channels include:
- Damon Gies – produces luxury flight content and with just 87k subscribers, received +65M views between March-April 2025
- Explorer Guru – creates in “street walking tours”, mainly throughout Asia, and has just 36k subscribers, but received over +21M views from March-April 2025
- Solo Solo Cruise – specializes in cruise content and has just 20k subscribers, yet produced +20M views between March-April 2025
- Beach Front Hikes – focuses on various beaches across the globe, and with just 52k subscribers, scored +10M views from March-April 2025
So, how can all of this trend data give travel industry advertisers a leg up?
First off, it tells travel/tourism advertisers that if they’re not already, they need to be advertising on YouTube! The YouTube travel ecosystem is so rich with travel content, and therefore with endless opportunities to connect with the right audiences through their ads.
Further, knowing which YouTube travel influencers are on the rise gives advertisers important insights into who they might want to partner with to promote their brands, and/or what kind of videos their ads should run on.
Lastly, for travel bag or travel merchandising companies specifically, this is the ideal time to capitalize on the highly trendy travel bag space, and place their stake in the travel market on YouTube. And even other travel and tourism companies can leverage the interest in these types of bags to influence the content they create and maybe even partnerships they make.
As the only company certified by Google’s YTMP (YouTube Measurement Program) for Contextual Targeting/Brand Suitability and YouTube Content Insights, Pixability is proud to be the only partner for advertisers with the data capabilities and team expertise to provide important insights on each trending “cultural moment” – even before it happens.