Ian McCaig, CEO of European OTA lastminute.com, is arguably one of the more upfront and realistic executives on the travel circuit and his latest appraisal of the industry isn’t for the faint-hearted.

He was recently quoted widely as saying 2010 will still be a tough year for many companies in travel, despite a chink of light at the end of an extremely dark tunnel of recessionary gloom.

Spain will struggle next year, France and Germany are best placed of all European countries to emerge quickly, while the UK will attempt to soldier on.

But as companies start to plan their marketing spend for the following 12 months, McCaig has a warning to those who are perhaps feeling that a major outpouring of advertising Euros, pounds and dollars is the best way forward.

“The best marketing channel for us at the moment is in analytics,” he told an audience of marketers yesterday at the BigMouthMedia Travel Summit in London.

Some might be considering whether to put their marketing spend into new areas (social) or sticking with the tried and tested (PPC) or simply having a crack at TV.

For McCaig and lastminute.com, good old fashioned monitoring of any marketing spend is where the best value will be gained.

He says: “I need to know exactly what is working and where we are getting the best return for us -- and you can only do that with investment in good analytics.”

These wise words might strike an awkward chord for those who observed the agency’s headfirst dive into some out-of-character marketing earlier in 2009.

Former European managing director Simon Thompson, who left in August 2009 for Apple, was behind the OTA’s most ambitious piece of marketing for a number of years -- it’s push for the Good Stuff  campaign.

The campaign saw the temporary use of retail outlets in key UK cities as well as a bizarre Mexican Thumb Wave adspot for TV -- a clip which PRs were pushing heavily at the time but bizarrely has only attracted around 40,000 views on YouTube.

Here it is again.

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