Hi, I have a travel site and decent budget to drive traffic to it. It is pretty niche and limited opportunity for ad words. What other channels would you suggest for good quality traffic
Link exchange and SEO will help you to drive traffic. And you can list your site in online business directories like Jigsaw.com and Business.com. This could be helpful.
SEM Search Engine MArketing is match for Travel. As Travel Information search is always search b travellers.
Seach engine optimization, article submission, banner on high traffic travel website/forum, or forum posting
What is the URL to the site, by seeing the site itself we can analyze and help you with the SEO aspect to get it ranked higher in the SERP's. Buying links will not boost your traffic to much, but it will help with your back links. Write articles about vacation spots, the list of spots are a mile long. You will receive traffic from those articles as well as gaining backlinks to your site at the same time. Have you looked into any press release services for the site?
I think Google is trying its best to create an environment where building quality websites with quality services/information is the ONLY way to get traffic. It's very difficult to get traffic nowadays. I'd recommend keep posting stuff on your site.
If you need traffic you have several options, if you need quality traffic then you have to go for SEO or PPC, SEO takes too much time PPC takes little money. Choose the path you want. Again, it's not about the traffic it's about the quality traffic which at least stays in your site for 30 sec.