How Influencers Are Switching Up The Travel Industry

Influencers are everywhere. A couple of years ago the whole thing was very different, with just a few big names building out their empires on Youtube. Now, we have some wealthy Influencers literally changing the shape of industries. A good Influencer partnership can bring in revenue, and boost a brand’s position in a market. So it makes sense to build one of those relationships.

One of the more interesting areas in which Influencers have developed brands is the travel industry. When you think about it, it’s one of those industries that seems like a natural fit for Influencers, who primarily use images and video to talk to their audiences. However, it is still exciting to see how Influencers have taken the travel industry on, and the value they bring to brands is quite incredible.

In this post we thought we’d take a look at just a few of those travel brands that have recognised the value of Influencers and capitalised on it. While it may seem obvious that big-name brands can both afford and create popular campaigns, we’re still kind of blown away by the creativity (and simplicity) of this work. And the best example of simplicity is the first one.

Airbnb

One of the most creative ideas in business for decades pulled off one of the simplest and most rewarding of Influencer campaigns in 2017. Coachella is a well-known music festival, mainly because it’s one that rock stars and movie stars attend themselves. It’s so hip that Airbnb decided to use some of the Influencers it could contact and the resulting campaign was pure genius.

But it was simple genius. All it did was secure some accommodation for some music acts that were performing (like Drake). However, the music acts that they gave accommodation to also happened to have large and thriving social media audiences.

The result was some huge publicity gains throughout the festival, as stars posted pictures and video of their Airbnb pads to their followers and fans. At the same time, the brand also used a certain power Influencer as well.

Stefanie Giesinger is a model, but also a power-Influencer. On Instagram she has 3.2 million followers (and the numbers are rapidly rising). She has huge reach and influence on the platform. And when she posts about Coachella and mentions her friends at Airbnb, it all turns into a huge amount of marketing value.

New York Influencers

There are more than a few of them, and there is a lot of Influence among them. The tourist board for Curacao recognised this, and they also made another connection that made huge sense.

Curacao is quite easy to reach for New Yorkers. The island is idyllic, a perfect getaway for your average New York citizen, and it can be flown to from JFK Airport. The Curacao tourist board decided to reach out to Influencers to build a campaign that would encourage New York people to visit.

One of these Influencers was Marcel Floruss. Note how in his Instagram post he mentioned a seemingly everyday moment (going to a fish market) while at the same time using the hashtag that delivers the goods of the tourist board. It’s a clever little piece of marketing for Curacao and it shows how joining up with a popular Influencer can do a lot, even for a tourist board.

Sun Peaks

This is a ski resort in British Columbia. It wanted to boost interest and it decided to pull together an Influencer campaign. However, it found one of the best in Callum Snape.

One of Canada’s top Influencers and a man who knows how to take a good picture (he’s an adventure photographer and highly respected), he visited Sun Peaks and took some truly captivating photos. This picture in particular really worked well.

The campaign stretched across more than one platform, but resulted in over 200,000 views of over three minutes. This helped the resort boost it’s profile, and created the results the team at Sun Peaks wanted. It was the perfect synergy of a destination and an Influencer who could bring real value to a client.

And let’s be honest, it was an incredible photo. Anyone wanting to go skiing would be captivated by it, and want to find out the details of the resort. Simple, really.

Is all of this real?

Well, considering the huge impact of Influencer marketing, pretty much everything we aspire to buy, from fashion to cars, is to some extent ‘unreal’. The Influencers are basically showing an idyllic holiday location to audiences in this case, so therefore we aren’t looking at someone’s genuine experience of a destination.

At the same time, the places these Influencers are visiting and showing us are really that beautiful. No filters will make Curacao any more beautiful than it already is. So it’s an intriguing case of how travel marketing is moving into a different area. Rather than look at holiday brochures on and offline, travellers can now just take a look at where their favourite Influencer want for their (paid for) holidays.

So while it’s not technically a true and honest account of a place or experience, it is working with places and experiences that essentially market themselves. Influencers just give thema little boost.

If you need to get your hands on data and analytics that make your client’s social media campaigns even sweeter, try Locowise free, for a whole week.