How to make a stunning travel brochure – Templates included

Last updated: 26th of September 2024

Traveling is one of life’s greatest pleasures. A journey to discover new places, cultures, and traditions and a reflective self-discovery trip we get to embark on every time we go somewhere else. Sometimes, stunning travel brochures are the only tools you have to inspire travelers to visit new destinations worth exploring.

Whether you run an online travel agency, work as an independent travel agent, or are promoting a tourist attraction, if you’re looking to learn how to make a travel brochure that impresses, you’re in the right place.

A well-designed travel brochure can capture attention and inspire wanderlust. But what exactly is a travel brochure, and how do you start? Let’s explore some stunning travel brochure ideas that will help you design something unique. Let’s just make sure we cover our bases first.

If you know how to make a travel brochure, you’ll inspire tourists to pack their bags and book their flight, hotel room, and adventure in no time. Due to that, the information travel brochures provide needs to answer fundamental questions about a destination. How’s the weather? What can you do once you get there? Which are the transit options? What are the prices? Coupled with appealing visuals that give tourists a taste of what the destination promises, the written content provides the educational part of the material. 

Understanding the purpose of a travel brochure can be the difference between a successful brochure marketing strategy and losses in revenue. To exemplify what a great travel brochure might look like and better illustrate the meaning of a travel brochure, I’m going to mention the brochures from Bookatrekking.com, a hiking company that meets the needs of people interested in visiting famous mountains around the world. It comes as a branded travel brochure with travel destination services.

Why create a travel brochure?

Travel brochures are probably the most diverse marketing material as you can fold them in different ways and bind them, and they are not limited in sizes like leaflets, pamphlets, or flyers. You can choose the one that fits your needs best based on factors such as budget, target audience, style, and overall marketing strategy.

Despite being the most popular choice for tourism service providers, even those who know how to make a travel brochure template often confuse it with other promotional materials. To clarify, we’ll go over the main differences in a few bullet points:

• Travel brochures have a minimum of two pages containing images and written content. They are primarily used for selling and marketing services, containing details about them and activities available in an area. 
• Pamphlets are much smaller in size, with a panel of written content and images. They are used to inform and educate, covering only one topic, and are similar in aspect to flyers. 
• Booklets have more pages and are more expensive, but they are usually used for manuals and are always bound. 
• Leaflets are similar to pamphlets and flyers if only a bit smaller and more sophisticated.

Still, printed marketing materials are outshined by their digital counterparts in the age of technology and the internet. Everything is made available and more appealing at the click of a button or the swipe of a screen, so why should your brochure marketing strategy stay in the past? Let’s see why you should look into digital travel brochures and some ways to reduce printing costs.

Why create a digital travel brochure?

Travel agencies or visitor’s centers will have different types of printed marketing materials available to browse. That part is unlikely to change. Still, people leave them behind, throw them away, and they become waste before the next season comes around.

Digital travel brochures don’t fall into this trap as they are, well … digital. They stay on your devices. You have them on your phone, always on hand, and, once downloaded, you can consult them anytime. Digital travel brochures are also editable. You won’t have to recover stacks of printed copies, discard them, and replace them before clients still take the content as accurate. You can just change the content as you wish.

When you create a travel brochure in digital form, you also gain flexibility. Still, how can you decide which is better for you and your business? Just consider the costs and your needs and organize your marketing strategy accordingly. Printed materials are necessary only to be showcased in information centers or travel agencies and for clients who don’t venture online for their traveling plans. Furthermore, given online services proficiency, you don’t need design experience to make a professional-looking travel brochure.

Learning how to make a travel brochure has never been easier. You can simply upload a PDF file in record time and play around with the features available. A quick guide will help you through the basics, and you’ll be halfway there.

How to make a travel brochure?

So far, from this article, you have discovered what is a travel brochure and what the differences between print and digital are. We can move on to the more exciting part of this article and probably the reason you’re here in the first place.

Let’s see how to make a travel brochure! At first, it can seem daunting to create a travel brochure, especially if you don’t have much marketing experience. From design to content, people think it is overwhelming. But, hey! That’s what brought you here, so let’s start!

How to make a travel brochure?

1. Think before you do
2. Develop a buyer persona
3. Organize your ideas
4. Choose the right format
5. Write a compelling copy
6. Make it visually appealing
7. Color outside the lines
8. Include branding elements
9. Reach your audience

But let’s take a closer look at them one by one and get into more details.

1. Think before you do

You know why travel brochures are important to a marketing strategy if you work in the tourism industry. Their main purpose is to market your services, but you don’t simply tell your customers about them. You make them as tangible as possible. Traveling isn’t a product that can be tested. You don’t get a trial version before you book your holiday, so you use travel brochures for that.

Of course, knowing what you’re promoting in your travel brochure is detrimental. Basing your written content on online information won’t guarantee success; what will is having experienced the things you write about. “Write about what you know,” as critics say, relates to the authenticity of the information. Imagination and creativity can take us only so far, but actual experience supersedes them. Explore the location and services for yourself as a simple Google search can tell a client about the best hotel in the area. You need to give them more. An effective travel brochure can make them feel like they are there, and first-hand experience is the best source for inspiring content.

An efficient travel brochure doesn’t only have the best images, design, copy, and color scheme. It must have all of that but focused on the customer’s needs. Otherwise, it’s a pamphlet. Interactive digital brochures do even more with added videos. Overwhelm your reader’s senses so that they imagine themselves experiencing those services. It will make the difference between browsing for services and buying them. Still, before writing your copy, get up close and personal with your targeted audience.

2. Develop a buyer persona

Knowing what you write is as important as knowing for whom you are writing. Developing a buyer persona will make you understand your audience better. You don’t want to promote skydiving to toddlers or a puppet show to adrenaline seekers. Know who will benefit the most from your services and address them. 

A buyer persona represents your ideal customer or target audience. This is a character you design based on what you sell and the characteristics of the person who buys your product. You need to know and understand your buyer persona like the back of your hand. Are they married? Do they have children? What’s their age group? Do you know their interests? What makes them tick? How do they book their holiday? What activities do they prefer? When in doubt, create several buyer personas (three is the recommended minimum) because you won’t only have one type of customer buying your products.

Developing your buyer persona is like creating a character for a book you’re writing. The story is all about the character; if you don’t understand your character thoroughly, the story will lose its flow, meaning, and authenticity. Look at reviews, testimonials, characteristics of potential clients, and your services to develop your buyer persona. Once you know what they want, you’ll be able to better accommodate their needs. When in doubt, look for templates online for designing your buyer persona, and once they become as tangible as possible without being real, you can start making your travel brochure.

3. Organize your ideas

Before you continue your travel brochure, you need a general idea of what your travel brochure will look like. It’s important you tell a story through your content, immerse your audience into an experience, and take them with you on a teaser of their holiday. But how do you do that? Take all the information you intend to write about, and make a plan for your travel brochure. 

Your buyer persona is your target audience, and you need to excite them. Readers are drawn to a good storyline, and as the storyteller, you’ll take them on an adventure. Infuse an emotion through your front page, delve deeper into the main subject with an intro, give them the main attractions, and show them what they’ll experience there. You need to tickle a nerve. Give them the right reasons to be unable to scroll past your offer, and convince them to purchase your services through compelling arguments. 

But don’t forget while your aim is to sell an emotion, you must keep it brief, succinct, and to the point. It’s the simple words that carry the heaviest emotions. This compelling argument should be recurring throughout your travel brochure, reiterating more and more as they move past each page. Tell a story through text, imagery, page layout, and flow. They will have to book their holiday by the end of your travel brochure, and if done correctly, it won’t turn out to be a novel. Size does matter in travel brochures. 

4. Choose the right format

Once you know what your travel brochure will be about and who will read it, you can get into the more technical elements of making a travel brochure. Size, style, and format mostly apply to foldable printed travel brochures designs due to folding techniques. Still, if you design your brochure in a digital format, you should keep this in mind. Using the digital version of your brochure for any printed copies will be easier than designing two, and you’ll find many travel brochure templates for various folding styles. Consider using a really good laptop for graphic design so the result is high quality on paper, too.

If you intend to print copies of your travel brochure, you should keep it simple, as custom shapes won’t save you money. That is if you don’t mind splurging on your marketing materials. The most common dimensions for brochures are A4, A5, and DL (dimension lengthwise), but for printed brochures, it’s the folding that takes the cake. You can pick and choose from the single fold, concertina fold, cross fold, open-gate fold, couple-gate fold, and roll fold, or make origami if you want to stand out. All that folding, however, can take away from the visuals you use.

Aside from the ability to print it, a digital brochure can come in various sizes. The basic option is an A4, horizontal or vertical, from which you can implement many folding techniques. Still, there is the letter format (916 x 1056 px) for a slightly wider variant, followed by the tabloid (1632 x 1056 px). The smaller sizes resemble the flyer (416 x 865 px) or booklet format (793 x 793 px). Still, you can make it multiple pages without considering paper quality, limited space, ink, and budget, especially if you want an informative copy. 

5. Write a compelling copy

As the most time-consuming part of how to make a travel brochure, you don’t want to rush through the copy. Words are an unlimited resource of magic in our world. They can hurt, heal, save, and push over the edge, making them a powerful tool to wield. Still, they make the intangible tangible, and thoughts can be made a reality through them. For the copy of a travel brochure template, get your grammar game on point. Check everything twice and be mindful of punctuation. Everything must work together, but without a good copy, even the most breathtaking images can’t save a travel brochure. When you think of the copy and the visuals, think of the heart and lungs of the travel brochure. One can not work without the other.

Be aware of who you’ll be addressing and how you’ll address them. Tailor your voice on your buyer’s personas. Address the copy as you would your friends. This makes the content more approachable for writers of any skill level and bridges the gap between you and your audience. Also, your travel brochure’s text (copy) must be descriptive. It has to paint a clear picture of the place where you’re inviting your readers. With interactive maps, your readers will get familiar with their surroundings and know what to expect.

Let readers visualize their experience. Transport them to your destination. Invite them over to try out new experiences. Enthusiasm is a contagious feeling, and you can transmit passion through words. Include a call to action once you drew them in by the written content like “Plan your adventure now!”, “Sign up for the latest offers!” or simply “Book!” Then the right visual will get them over the finish line in no time.

6. Make it visually appealing

While we’ve established that telling a story is detrimental to the informational part of what is a travel brochure, the imagery is the visual that shows the story and captures the attention. If the images are dull, you could write the next Romeo & Juliette, and no one will read it. As images are the first things people see when they look at examples of a travel brochure, include engaging visuals that showcase experiences and people having fun, giving your audience a taste of the sight-seeing part of traveling. 

We are visual creatures drawn to aesthetics. It’s in our genetic makeup, and by using appealing imagery of landscapes, you can relay a feeling, even if it’s only longing to be in that place. If you want to take your travel brochure to the next level, implement interactive features. Think of your buyer’s persona and target their fantasies. Whether it’s sunbathing while enjoying a cocktail, hiking peaks while the thrill of birds keeps you company, or something exhilarating like a skydiving video embed, provide for that fantasy through a virtual tour but keep it accurate. Don’t sell something you don’t have.

Once you decide on the story, you want to tell, finding the right images will be easy. There are multiple websites for stock photos that you can use, many for free or for a fee. The quality of the images you use matters, and if you’re willing to go the extra mile, hire a professional photographer. Stock images can go a long way, but original imagery, commissioned to express a particular emotion, has a different impact. It will also help with how they perceive you in the field, increasing your position among competitors through original content. Combine the visuals with the color pallet for a harmonious travel brochure design.

7. Color outside the lines

After choosing your images carefully, make sure you select a color scheme for your brochure. When it comes to designing your own travel brochure template, the sky’s the limit. You can use branding, style, and imagery to create a color scheme. Firstly, the importance of a color scheme is relevant if color is a focus of your travel brochure. 

Knowing how to make a digital brochure doesn’t mean you must know or be proficient at travel brochure design. However, if you intend to use color to highlight some sections of your travel brochure or create a theme, you must remember the overall pallet you use. Again, if color is not an overwhelming part of your design, you can be relatively liberal with what colors you use. Still, if your travel brochure has plenty of turquoise images of ocean beaches with clear blue water, the designer can integrate blues perfectly throughout the travel brochure design.

A well-known fact, blue is one of the calmest colors. It communicates peace and tranquility. So, when advertising beach resorts or hotels, you may want to use lighter shades of blue to send the right message with your travel brochure design. That is the psychological effect colors have on us. Similarly, orange inspires action, and green can be soothing if it’s light or envy-inducing if dark. Red stands for passion but also anger, while purple is luxurious. You can use a color wheel to better understand which colors work best together to ensure an enticing combination. Use your brand colors, and your company will become synonymous with the best holiday of their lives in no time.

8. Include branding elements

You may know some businesses in the tourism industry by their logos, slogans, or images. Think of the font in Holiday Inn’s logo, “Sweet Home Alabama ”, “The city that never sleeps,” or “Finger Likin’ Good,” and tell me your mind doesn’t go places. Implementing branding in a brochure marketing campaign doesn’t only help with sales but will also increase the company’s and its services’ popularity. The message sticks with the consumer; if the overall experience is good, they come again. If not, they know to stay away from it.

That is why brand consistency throughout your marketing materials is essential. If your clients enjoy themselves, it will help them remember your brand and return when the next holiday comes around. Branding means everything from your company’s logo, slogan, brand colors, font pairings, or typography. Incorporate branding elements in your marketing materials to connect your brand to the message. Aside from standing out and being recognized from the millionth other brands, using them will breed loyalty.

Keep your brand in mind throughout your travel brochure and other marketing materials. Maybe you can work with the colors, some cursive lettering titles, or simply a feeling that oozes from your brand. Whatever it is, work it throughout your travel brochure design with a branding kit. If your brand colors are pastels, keep to those hues and tints, but if it’s black and white, think carefully about adding color. What you have to say can also make a difference so keep the general idea of your written content in the back of your mind before you get around to hashing it out. Now all you need to do is send your travel brochure to people.

9. Reach your audience

Once you finish your travel brochure examples, you need to publish them. You save it in whatever editor you’re using and send it to the printer if you want to have physical copies. You can send traditional printed brochures to hotels, and trade events, in PR kits or through the post. 

A digital travel brochure lives online, and you can share it as a PDF link as far and wide as possible. Share a link that opens the page or a full-screen link to open the travel brochure in full-screen mode in your browser. You can easily share it through social media platforms, email, and embedded on websites and downloaded for further consultation in various formats. Like that, you won’t need an internet connection or to carry them in hand wherever you travel.

Some distribution paths incur additional costs, which is why digital travel brochures are gaining more terrain. We’re not saying that if you go digital, you won’t need a marketing budget, but when for 5000 printed brochures, you need around $2000 for design, printing, delivery, and distribution. A monthly fee of $35 is a bargain. Considering all the benefits, features, and design options you get from such a package, you’ll save money faster than ever. On top of that, once you share your published digital travel brochure, you can also update any pricing or information alterations in real-time. Talk about efficiency.

Design your travel brochure with Flipsnack

Travel Brochures Examples

From here on out, we’re done with the technical aspects of digital travel brochures. Now we’ll show you that we don’t only talk the talk but also walk the walk. Below are a few travel brochure ideas that you can use to inspire your next project.

Blue Sea Tourism Brochure Template

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, if the image looks anything like the one in the travel brochure example below, it’s easy to see where that saying comes from. This blue sea travel brochure template will ignite any beach lover’s imagination.

As you browse through its pages, one thing that stands out is the turquoise color of water and sky integrated throughout the brochure. The page number is of a similarly shaded background. Make this work for any breathtaking visual by changing the color of other connected elements throughout the template. Once you have done this, introduce your logo, replace the images and text, add interactions to capture your audience’s attention, and personalize it for your business.

Pattern Themed Travel Brochure Example

A dynamic travel brochure template can help you organically highlight the most appealing activities if you have a theme in mind. With the spotlight on them, simplicity is essential as you don’t want other elements to distract the readers.

Here we have a pattern themed travel brochure. The travel brochure design makes it look like a diary photo album, intentionally connecting a personal item so that the reader connects to it with ease. Cursive writing titles on polaroid photographs make it feel like a travel journal you make before your trip begins. It’s an inspirational and concise way to bridge the gap between the experience available and the reader who has yet to experience them.

Adventure Trip Brochure Template

This digital travel brochure example can come in foldable templates that work in both the printed and digital worlds. Select the main attraction for the promoted destination and inspire your readers’ curiosity enough to generate leads. 

This front-and-back adventure travel brochure template gives an immersive experience through visuals that continue beyond the page. A design created for the tourism industry ensures that travelers get access to all the relevant information while at the same time seeing a sneak peek of the attractions they can visit. Make it foldable in printed version or keep it digital for easy distribution. The choice is yours once you customize it with the most popular attractions, best-reviewed hotels, and highest-scoring restaurants.

Informative Travel Brochure Idea

Marketing strategies come in different forms, and teasers work to ignite the spark, tickle curiosity, and demand action. You can use a simple, short, and content-limited travel brochure example if you include your contact information.

The saying, less is more is the best way to describe a teaser brochure marketing campaign. Through this informative travel brochure template, you only give your readers a taste, the smallest sample of the experiences they could enjoy. Still, if you add a few more between the front and back, you can give them as much information as you want. Activate a form for access inside of it and easily gather contact information from them.

Double Gate Fold Holiday Promotion Brochure Template

You can fold printed travel brochures differently, but you can see this from the template. On the outside, you say what it’s about. Open it to start your story, and open it again to find out more.

This double-gate fold travel brochure template comes with layers. Each layer takes the audience deeper and deeper as you provide more information about the offers available. While the main image starts on the front page in its folded format, it continues on the inside without creating a bigger image. It simply continues. Once it’s fully open, you can show different locations worth visiting and give your clients a choice. Break apart the text with relevant images, so they understand their options.

Before & After

When you create a travel brochure, these templates offer easy customization so that you can easily personalize and promote your services. We discussed some of these features throughout the article, but this before-and-after section is where you see them in action. Changing the pictures and text is one thing, but there’s so much more you can do with Flipsnack. The before the template is the version without any customization. In the after template, you’ll be able to see the distinguishable changes and some that are not as visible.

Conclusion

There are many ways to make a travel brochure through Flipsnack. As you can see, the options are boundless. Your imagination is the only limit. Besides creativity and a sense of wonder, you now have the tools necessary to create breathtaking travel brochures that can reach your audience wherever they may go, so don’t hold back. Take your time, try out the features available through Flipsnack, and figure out which makes more sense for your product and how you can use them both for your and your audience’s utmost benefit. 

Bring those incredible holiday destinations to your buyer personas screens, where they don’t have to go out of their way to find out about them, and ensure an authentic connection from the start. Show them what they want to see, create it in Flipsnack, and give it to them. New experiences feed our growth, but some may need an extra push. Give it to them through your first travel brochure, and they’ll thank you for it later.

FAQ

• 1. What is the most effective way to share digital travel brochures?
  To effectively distribute digital travel brochures, host them on your website with SEO optimization for phrases like “what is a travel brochure” to boost search visibility. Use email marketing to target specific groups and promote on social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook. You can also upload your brochure on platforms like Flipsnack to expand your global reach. This ensures a broad audience sees your travel brochure and engages with it.
• 2. How can I measure the success or impact of a travel brochure campaign?
  After you create a travel brochure, you can track its success using tools like Google Analytics to measure views, downloads, and actions like bookings. For print brochures, include promo codes or specific calls to action to gauge response rates. The travel brochure’s purpose in this context is about driving engagement and conversions, and customer feedback can help assess its effectiveness.
• 3. What are the specific differences between a travel brochure aimed at adventure tourists versus luxury travelers?
  When learning how to make a travel brochure for adventure tourists, focus on bold designs and dynamic imagery showcasing excitement and thrill. For luxury travelers, use elegant layouts and high-quality images to emphasize exclusivity. Each audience responds differently, so adjusting your travel brochure ideas to their preferences is key to creating brochures that resonate.
• 4. What are the costs associated with creating high-quality digital versus print travel brochures?
  When you create a travel brochure, digital formats are often more cost-effective, especially with platforms like Flipsnack that eliminate printing costs. However, design tools or professional services may add to expenses. Print brochures, especially those using premium paper or finishes, involve higher costs for production and distribution. Understanding these expenses helps in managing the budget while delivering a high-quality travel brochure.
• 5. How do travel brochures compare in effectiveness to other marketing tools like social media or video content?
  A travel brochure provides in-depth information and is perfect for travelers who want a detailed resource. While social media and video content offer quick engagement and dynamic storytelling, brochures excel in offering a more structured, complete guide. Combining travel brochure ideas with other marketing tools creates a balanced approach, using brochures for depth and social media for a broader reach