Travel signals redefined as India becomes advertisers’ new test market

India’s travel economy is surging back, but the marketing playbook that surrounds it is changing even faster. Data from the Reserve Bank of India shows that Indian travellers reportedly spent nearly $1.3 billion on international travel in April 2025.

This is a 10% increase year-on-year and 13% higher than March. As outbound tourism scales new highs and domestic travel deepens beyond metros, advertisers are beginning to treat travel audiences as more than just tourists.

For Agoda, a platform that thrives on real-time intent signals, the question is no longer whether Indian consumers are travelling—it’s how brands can meet them in those decision-making moments. That is where Unpromptd steps in.

The newly forged partnership between Unpromptd and Agoda, one of Asia’s largest digital travel players, marks a deliberate push to connect Indian brands with what both companies call “conversion-ready audiences.”

In practice, as a market-entry and growth partner for global technology platforms, Unpromptd will take charge of Agoda’s advertiser relationships in India—managing sales, local execution, and campaign design support.

The deal comes at a time when Indian advertisers are wrestling with a fragmented digital ecosystem, and many are questioning whether reach-heavy strategies without measurable outcomes still justify rising ad spends.

“India is at the forefront of APAC’s digital ad growth, with mobile devices now accounting for nearly 70% of the country’s digital ad spend,” said Prashant Kala, who leads Agoda’s Media Solutions.

Filling the gaps in India’s ad market

For Akshay Mathur, founder and CEO of Unpromptd, the play is as much about fixing structural gaps as it is about selling Agoda’s inventory. “Advertisers in India want to connect with premium audiences through platforms that balance reach and accuracy. This partnership focuses on leveraging Agoda’s strengths for local advertisers,” he said.

He argues that most platforms on the open internet promise reach but often fail to deliver deterministic signals of transaction behaviour. Agoda, he contends, closes that loop.

Akshay Mathur, founder and CEO of Unpromptd

“Agoda allows advertisers to access high-intent travel audiences and high-spending users, including the top 1% of India’s population who are high-net-worth consumers. This is based on solid data that captures real transaction behaviour, something most other platforms can’t offer,” Mathur stated.

The proposition is not just eyeballs but audiences already moving through the purchase funnel. This could include booking a flight, planning a stay, or arranging a family trip.

The case for measurable outcomes

In a digital environment where measurement often lags behind ambition, Mathur insists the partnership is designed to link spends directly to outcomes. According to him, the strength of Agoda’s media offering comes from its ability to reach audiences who are ready to book travel, giving advertisers a clear edge when looking for measurable results.

“But the opportunity goes beyond just last-mile performance,” he added.

Hence, Unpromptd has a layered model: short-term campaign metrics like engagement rates, qualified traffic, and conversions; mid-funnel indicators such as brand recall and preference shaping over six months; and, over the long term, the creation of sustainable audience groups and brand loyalty.

This way, advertisers can relate their investments not just to sales but to lasting influence on consumers. The approach targets an advertiser base increasingly wary of digital fatigue, click fraud, and opaque attribution models.

Travel audiences as premium consumers

Another challenge is reframing what a ‘travel audience’ really means in India. “One of the biggest misconceptions is that travel audiences are only relevant to airlines, hotels, or tourism boards,” Mathur noted. “In reality, people who are actively planning and booking travel are among the most valuable consumer segments—they are in-market, high-intent, and often high-spending.”

Agoda has therefore experimented with tailoring campaigns around regional travel behaviours, integrating local payment options, and aligning messaging with seasonality. A recent campaign with a destination marketing organisation in Britain, Kala said, achieved higher booking rates when customised for regional audiences compared with generic messaging.

“Our goal is to make every touchpoint—from inspiration to booking—feel authentically Indian,” he further explained.

For categories such as electronics, FMCG, fintech, and luxury, this redefinition is significant. A consumer booking an overseas trip may also be shopping for a new phone, forex services, or premium fashion. A family headed for a domestic holiday may be weighing purchases in packaged foods, apparel, or personal care.

“Our approach to education will be rooted in data and use cases,” Mathur said. “We will work closely with advertisers to run pilot campaigns, showcase success stories, and share category-specific benchmarks.”

The task, then, is to move travel audiences out of their silo and position them as proxies for premium consumer demand across sectors.

Drawing the line with creative

For advertisers, the question is whether Unpromptd will also play a role in creative direction. Mathur takes a pragmatic view.

“Our main goal is to drive sales and build relationships with advertisers for Agoda in India. This means we focus on sales, execution, and smooth delivery,” he said. “We don’t view ourselves as a substitute for agencies or brand marketing teams. Instead, we see ourselves as partners who can provide platform insights during the creative process.”

That support may include advising brands on which messaging resonates with travellers ready to book, how to best use Agoda’s audience groups, and how to adapt global campaigns for Indian contexts.

“Unpromptd won’t create campaigns from start to finish,” Mathur clarified. “Our aim is to make sure that every rupee spent on Agoda reaches the right audience and delivers the right message.”

Managing consistency across channels

With campaigns running across Agoda’s platform, social media, display, email, and even post-booking, the challenge lies in balancing consistency with channel-specific creativity. The approach mirrors industry best practices—designing content ground-up for each channel while maintaining brand safety and narrative coherence.

AI-driven tools help customise campaigns by region, language, and travel seasonality, while ensuring compliance and safeguards. “This helps our partner brands reach consumers whether they’re planning a family trip to Singapore, or a business stay in Bangalore,” Kala added.

Prashant Kala, who leads Agoda’s Media Solutions.

Agoda’s media solutions (AMS) offering is built around real-time travel intent signals—identifying travellers as they plan and purchase. This enables the company to segment and target India’s diverse traveller base with precision, delivering relevant and timely campaigns, designed responsibly.

Recent AMS campaigns in India have reportedly driven app installs, higher credit card usage, and stronger booking volumes. For Kala, “hyper-localisation in India means more than just translation, it’s about cultural and contextual relevance.”

He described the process: AMS starts with a core campaign narrative, then adapts creative assets for each channel’s strengths. One current example involves a superapp aiming to reach Indian travellers across Southeast Asia within 30 days, with a unified message distributed through social media, travel guide articles, in-app display, and email marketing.

Non-travel brands in the travel funnel

Agoda is also making a case for non-endemic brands to join its travel funnel. “Fintech, FMCG, and lifestyle partners have achieved strong results by delivering relevant offers at natural points in the journey,” Kala said.

From credit card issuers to packaged goods players, brands can insert themselves into stress-points of travel planning—airport purchases, in-hotel consumption, or on-trip shopping.

“By placing these brands top of mind during the trip planning process—and connecting with travellers at key points—we significantly increase the likelihood of meaningful engagement,” Kala explained.

With APAC’s ad spend shifting heavily toward mobile and video, and privacy regulations reshaping targeting, Agoda is banking on its first-party data and personalisation tools to keep brands invested.

The Agoda–Unpromptd partnership is about more than plugging travel advertising into India’s digital marketplace. It signals a shift in how premium audiences are defined and accessed. In a market where advertisers are chasing efficiency, measurable outcomes, and brand-safe environments, travel intent signals may prove a more reliable proxy for purchase behaviour than generic demographics.a

The Agoda deal also aligns with Unpromptd’s broader scaling strategy. The company raised $750,000 in seed funding in July 2025 from angel investors including Deven Dharamdasani and Ashwani Mehta of Momentus Digital. “The seed funding was raised with a clear goal: to strengthen Unpromptd’s role as the go-to partner for global tech and adtech platforms seeking to grow in Asia,” Mathur explained.

For Indian brands, the experiment lies in whether they can move beyond celebrity-heavy campaigns and blunt discounting, towards context-rich, intent-driven engagement. For global platforms like Agoda, it is about whether localisation can be done without diluting scale.

As India’s outbound and domestic travel continues its sharp upward curve, those answers will determine not just how campaigns are designed but how budgets are allocated in the years ahead.