What's a Good Email Open Rate for Travel and Hospitality Companies in 2026?

Travel and transportation companies post the lowest average email open rate of any major industry tracked in 2025, at 30.10% — roughly 13 percentage points below the 43.46% cross-industry average — according to MailerLite's Email Marketing Benchmarks report.

Where This Number Comes From

MailerLite's report is based on its own platform send data spanning 46 industries and 7 regions for 2025, with an all-industry average open rate of 43.46%, up from 42.35% in 2024. Travel and transportation's 30.10% is the single lowest open rate of any industry category in the report, alongside a click rate of 1.68% and an unsubscribe rate of 0.13%.

Why Travel Underperforms on Open Rate

MailerLite's analysis attributes weak open rates in categories like travel and transportation, ecommerce, and publishing to sending patterns: these industries tend to email broader audiences more frequently, often with promotional content rather than transactional or highly personalized messages. That combination — high send frequency, broad targeting, promotional framing — is a well-documented driver of lower open rates across email marketing generally, and travel sits at the extreme end of that pattern in MailerLite's data.

The Click Rate Is a More Encouraging Signal

Despite the low open rate, travel's 1.68% click rate is actually above health and fitness's 1.45% and not far off the 2.09% cross-industry average — meaning subscribers who do open travel emails click through at a reasonably healthy rate. That gap between weak opens and comparatively solid clicks suggests the bigger lever for travel brands is getting into the inbox and earning the open in the first place, not what happens after someone opens.

What This Means for Travel Email Programs

A 30.10% open rate should not be read as evidence that travel subscribers are disengaged across the board — the same data shows they click at a healthy rate once they open. The gap points instead toward subject lines, sender reputation, send frequency, and list segmentation as the more likely places to find improvement, rather than content or offer quality once the email is opened.

Segmentation as the Practical Lever

Because travel brands typically mix deal-alert subscribers, past customers, and general newsletter sign-ups into one list, a single blended send often underperforms what any one of those segments would produce on its own. Splitting sends by trip intent or past booking behavior — rather than blasting the full list with every promotion — is one of the more direct ways to move a 30.10% baseline upward without changing send frequency or content volume at all.

Bottom Line

If your travel or hospitality email program is opening below 30%, you're underperforming even this already-low industry baseline and should look first at send frequency and list hygiene; if you're at or above 30.10% with clicks trailing your opens, the bigger opportunity is tightening subject lines and segmentation to get more of your list into the inbox in the first place, not rewriting the emails themselves.

Sources: MailerLite, "Email Marketing Benchmarks 2025," based on platform send data across 46 industries and 7 regions.