Communication Theory of Aviasales

Aviasales is a travel metasearch service that helps users find and compare cheap flight tickets. The brand does not sell tickets directly: instead, it checks offers from airlines and ticket agencies and redirects users to the best available options.

This makes Aviasales a mediator between the consumer and the travel market.

Aviasales positions itself as a simple, fast, and money-saving service for independent travelers. Its core promise is not luxury or premium travel, but access to affordable mobility.

The main positioning idea can be summarized as:

This positioning is visible in the brand’s product functions: flexible filters, baggage options, low-price calendar, low-price map, and notifications when ticket prices change.

Brand Personality

Aviasales communicates in a bold, humorous, informal, and culturally relevant tone. The brand does not speak like a traditional travel agency. Instead, it behaves like a witty digital friend who understands the everyday problems of travelers. Its tone combines:

Practical usefulness + humor + speed + cultural awareness.

This combination helps the brand stand out in a competitive market where many services offer similar technical functions.

Target Audience

According to the Aviasales media kit, the brand’s core audience is people aged 25–45, with women making up around 50% of the audience. The service reports around 20 million monthly unique users, 200 million monthly searches, and 5.1 million social media followers.

Audience Needs

They want to save money, compare prices, avoid complicated booking processes, receive price-drop notifications, and find travel inspiration.

At the emotional level, the audience wants freedom, spontaneity, escape from routine, and the feeling that travel is possible even with a limited budget.

Aviasales uses a multi-channel communication strategy. Its official media kit lists several major platforms, including VK, Telegram, X, TikTok, Zen, YouTube, Odnoklassniki, and its own travel journal.

This means that Aviasales does not rely only on the website or app. It builds a full communication ecosystem around travel, humor, useful information, and brand entertainment.

Website as the Main Communication Channel

Functionally, it allows users to search for flights, compare options, use filters, and find better prices. Persuasively, it communicates simplicity and control: the user feels that the complicated process of finding tickets becomes easier.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model, developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo, explains how persuasive messages influence people. The model focuses on cognitive processing and shows that people do not always process advertising messages in the same way. According to ELM, persuasion can happen through two main routes: the central route
and the peripheral route
.

ELM is especially suitable for analyzing Aviasales because the brand uses both rational and emotional persuasion.

Central Route

The central route is activated when the user is highly motivated and able to process information. For Aviasales, this happens when a person really needs to buy a ticket. The user compares prices, studies filters, checks baggage rules, looks at dates, and evaluates whether the service gives a better deal.

In this case, persuasion is based on strong arguments: price, convenience, comparison, transparency, and useful tools.

Peripheral Route

The peripheral route is activated when the user is not ready to think deeply or does not have an immediate need to buy a ticket. For Aviasales, this often happens on social media. A user may see a meme, joke, funny post, or visual campaign without planning to travel right now.

The message still works because it creates a positive emotional association with the brand.

Central Route in the Website Interface

The Aviasales website activates central-route processing because users come there with a specific goal: to find a flight.

The search bar asks users to enter departure city, destination, dates, and number of passengers. This structure encourages active thinking and comparison.

Objective Elaboration

The Aviasales interface encourages objective elaboration because users compare factual information: dates, prices, airlines, baggage, transfers, and travel time.

The decision is built from the bottom up. The user check the available options and make a rational choice.

Social Media and Campaigns

While the website activates the central route, Aviasales' social media presence primarily relies on the peripheral route. The brand’s X (ex. Twitter; banned in Russia), Instagram (owned by Meta, which is recognized as an extremist organization in Russia) channels rarely talk directly about flight prices or booking features. Instead, they use humor, memes, relatable situations, and pop-culture references.

For example, posts about «vacation vs. work,» funny travel fails, or trending memes do not require the audience to think logically. The user does not need to evaluate arguments — they simply enjoy the content. The persuasion happens through positive affect, entertainment, and source attractiveness.

Influencer Marketing

Aviasales actively works with influencers and bloggers as part of their peripheral route strategy. The company has a dedicated Influencer Marketing Manager position, focusing on implementing advertising campaigns with bloggers and opinion leaders.

Rather than using traditional celebrity endorsements, Aviasales prefers to collaborate with travel bloggers and social media influencers who resonate with their target audience. These collaborations often appear as native content in social networks and Telegram channels, where influencers share their travel experiences using Aviasales in an organic, non-intrusive way.

Gamification Campaign

One of the most successful peripheral route campaigns is the «Travel Passport» («Паспорт путешественника») — a physical passport cover with extra pages for collecting stamps from 32 Russian cities.

Users collect stamps like achievements in a game, creating emotional engagement without rational evaluation. The psychology of collecting triggers retention and motivates new trips — people want to «complete the set». The campaign creates emotional engagement, playfulness, and a sense of community

Main Strengths

Clear functional positioning: cheap and convenient flight search. Strong central-route arguments: price comparison, filters, alerts, and travel tools. Memorable peripheral cues: humor, liking, social proof, and urgency. Multi-channel presence: website, app, Telegram, VK, TikTok, YouTube, Zen, travel journal, and PR. Brand consistency: informal, useful, fast, and entertaining communication across channels.

Recommendations

1. The brand could make more educational content that explains how to use filters, price alerts, baggage options, and flexible dates. This would strengthen the central route.

2. Aviasales could create more user stories showing how real people saved money using the service. This would combine central arguments with social proof.

3. The brand could balance humor with practical information. Humor is powerful, but some users need serious support when making travel decisions.

4. Aviasales could use more transparent explanations of how metasearch works. This would increase trust because users would better understand that Aviasales compares offers rather than selling tickets directly.

Aviasales is a strong example of a modern digital brand that uses both rational and emotional persuasion. Through the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we can see that the brand’s website and app mainly activate the central route, while social media and PR often activate the peripheral route.

The central route is based on strong arguments: cheap tickets, comparison, filters, alerts, and useful travel tools. The peripheral route is based on humor, liking, social proof, urgency, and authority.

The combination of these two routes makes Aviasales communication effective. It helps the brand attract users when they are ready to buy and remain memorable when they are only dreaming about travel.