5 Travel Brands Crushing Their Influencer Marketing Game Right Now
This week we’re keeping it going with 5 more brands that are finding great ways to incorporate Influencer Marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy. Up this week — we’re on the move with travel brands:
- Making travel guides with Airbnb and Aspyn Ovard
- Finding travel essentials with Proctor & Gamble and Jennifer Chiu
- Crossing industries with Moët and Chandon and Collage Vintage
- Travel reviews with Celebrity Cruises and World of Wanderlust
- Viral packing guides with Biaggi Luggage and Rachel Grant
Check out the details below:
Making Travel Guides with Airbnb:
One of the hardest parts of going somewhere is deciding what to do once you get there. Travel guides are a great way to engage an audience with tips about where to sleep, where to eat, and where to play. Check out Airbnb’s travel guide collaboration with Aspyn Ovard.
This campaign positions Airbnb well with the wanderlust community as an alternative to traditional hotel accommodations — and Aspyn does a great job of playing up all the perks of space and privacy that Airbnb can provide. She includes the brand as part of her full experience abroad in Turks and Caicos, and leveraged the travel guide format to educate and engage her audience. Aspyn’s Instagram post promoting her Turks and Caicos travel guide received over 175,000 likes.
Finding Travel Essentials with Proctor & Gamble:
It’s tough being on the road so travelers love to hear about essentials that help get them from A to B. Take a page from Proctor & Gamble’s Travel Essentials campaign with Jennifer Chiu, where she highlighted her travel essentials.
Two reasons why this campaign worked well: once again, the collaboration offers content that is useful/educational to the audience and the right alignment between brand and the influencer. Proctor & Gamble is this case is looking to promote necessary products for the everyday traveler. By the same token, Jennifer Chiu’s YouTube channel “Chiu Tips” focuses on “tips, tricks and hacks for everyday life”. The travel essentials video is natural to her audience — and that comes across in the metrics: Jennifer’s sponsored video has raked in a whopping 77,102 views and counting.
Crossing Industries with Moët and Chandon:
In this case, Moët and Chandon is not your typical “travel” brand. The French winery is looking to appeal a premium audience — beyond only thinking about the food & beverage vertical when it comes to influencers. Moët and Chandon showcased their Ice Impérial champagne campaign with travel influencer, Collage Vintage.
Collage Vintage does a beautiful job of pairing the luxurious feel of Moët and Chandon champagne with the feel of extravagant luxury travel to “paradise”. In a broader sense, campaigns like this help expand the Moët and Chandon brand beyond the product to a lifestyle.Collage Vintage’s promotional IG posts raked in some 15,000 likes.
Travel Reviews with Celebrity Cruises:
Similar to a travel guide, travel reviews are also useful and educational way for brands to to collaborate influencers. They tend to be more focused than the general travel guide. Travelers love to hear other travelers give candid opinions about experiences they had abroad. Here, the key is that the influencer maintains their audiences’ trust by being careful to promote brands that they already have an affinity to. Take a look at Celebrity Cruises sponsored review with World of Wanderlust.
In this campaign, the cruise liner has everything laid out for would-be passengers. World of Wanderlust discusses everything from pricing and on-boarding to the ship’s travel itinerary. She then goes into a full review of life aboard Celebrity Cruises showing audiences the many onboard delights and entertainments that they have to offer. The travel review was quite well received. Her Instagram promotions averaged around 12,000 likes while the actual travel review was shared more than 100 times, pulling in comment after comment praising Celebrity Cruises.
Packing Guides with Biaggi:
It’s the worst feeling to get somewhere and realize you’ve forgotten something. That’s why packing guides are a must. That’s also why they make for great campaigns like this one with Biaggi and Rachel Grant.
This campaign gives us a run down of the tips of an efficient packer. We get lots of little travel nuggets like how many pairs of shoes one should pack and how to safely store your liquids all while featuring the sturdy and featherweight Biaggi’s 22 inch Zipsack. This campaign is ridiculous in the best way. The average person would not have thought it remotely possible to fit 100 items into a bag not even 2 ft tall. Rachel somehow pulls it off.
Interestingly, neither Rachel nor Biaggi have followings of viral proportions. Viewers found Rachel’s video entertaining and awe inspiring so much so that her challenge video has gone viral being viewed more than
Needless to say, influencers can be the glue that holds travel campaigns together. Bloglovin’s Director of Sales, John Kalis, helps sum this up:
“We see more and more amazing travel content creators coming onto the scene every day. For travel marketers looking to leverage these influencers, scale & quality are not mutually exclusive. I have seen some of the most amazing travel content produced by influencers with a relatively small following that are having more authentic, on-going conversations with their engaged audiences.”
Influencers both big and small can help turn the average travel campaign into a winner.
For more travel industry insights be sure to check out Bloglovin’s 2016 Micro-Influencers and Omni-Social Strategy where we delve into the six major micro-influencer industries and the social channels they use to connect with audiences.
Many thanks to Samone Wheeler for her contributions to this article.
Want to learn more about Bloglovin’ or Activate? Just drop us a note at [email protected].
5 Travel Brands Crushing Their Influencer Marketing Game Right Now was originally published in Bloglovin’ Influence on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
