The market for influencer marketing reached a valuation of $21.1 billion in 2023, according to Statista. Brands and businesses are carving out marketing budget and freebies for influencers more than ever, typically as a strategy for driving brand awareness and, in some industries like consumer product goods, for sales (“use code HEATHER for 20% off your first order!”).
Hotels and the ROI of influencer marketing (at least in terms of dollars and cents) have always had a murky relationship. The reality is that travel-booking decisions take much more time and thought than most other purchase decisions. It’s much easier to decide to try a new multivitamin based on an influencer’s Instagram post than it is to decide to book a hotel stay because of one. “What are my ideal dates? Is my travel partner aligned? Will my PTO get approved? Does this hotel fall within my company’s travel policy?”
When it comes to influencer marketing in the hospitality industry, it’s tricky to correlate influencer posts with bookings. So why use influencer marketing? How do you know when it’s actually worth it to offer up a multi-night stay or even compensate an influencer in exchange for posts?
Here’s the good news: the influencer space has shifted in recent years and hotel marketers have more opportunity than ever to maximize the value of their partnerships. It’s all thanks to the recent boom of what is referred to as the “creator economy.” Where, traditionally, influencer marketing was seen as a mix of paid media (you pay for the partnership) and earned media (you’ve earned space on the influencer’s social channels), hotel marketers should be considering the value of owned media performance—your hotel’s own social media channels—in equal measure. Beautiful influencer content should live for a long time on your hotel’s social channels, where it will gain additional views and continue to perform as some of your hotel’s most beautiful, eye-catching content.
This and a few other best practices will help you broker collaborations that stand out, that return the most value on your investment (whether trade or monetary) and that actually influence travel decision-making.
Allocating influencer content
Influencers became influential because they’re talented content creators. People wouldn’t follow them if they didn’t have an above-average knack for creating thumb-stopping, visually arresting content. Think of them like artists: they create posts that draw people in. Why, then, do some hotel marketers skip the step of ensuring that an influencer’s beautiful photos, videos and storytelling can live on their hotel’s social media channels? The right to use several of an influencer’s “creations” (their photos and videos from their stay with you) on your own social channels should be baked into every influencer agreement brokered. Ideally, the usage rights are in perpetuity; meaning, you can post and re-post them as you see fit. This becomes more difficult the larger the following of the influencer, but some will entertain brand usage rights for three to six months.
Audience size matters and micro-influencers are in the sweet spot
In the travel space, micro-influencers might just be your best bet. Defined as having between 10,000 and 150,000 followers, these influencers actually still influence people with their perspectives. They remain generally likable and, while aspirational, aren’t so far off the plane of reality that people write them off (or even secretly loathe them). Micro-influencers are often still out to prove themselves, so they’re more likely to put a lot of thought behind the high-quality content they produce and the niche perspective they offer. Micro- and even nano- (between 1,000 – 5,000 followers) influencers have the highest engagement rate (meaning the number of people who like, comment on, share or save their posts) beating out mega influencers who have 1-million-plus followers. Micro-influencers influence action.
Embrace diverse perspectives and content
Seventy-seven percent of Instagram influencers making money worldwide are women, according to Collabstr’s 2023 Influencer Marketing Report. So many of us still think of a Caucasian woman, in her 20s or 30s, posing for the camera when the word “influencer” comes to mind. Yet there are so many talented influencers and creators outside this demographic—people of color, people above age 40—and it’s their content that often stands out and stops a social feed scroll. Consider Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants “Stay Human Creator Collective,” a group of six diverse influencers who partner regularly with the brand, creating beautiful travel content that reflects the diverse array of real travelers at the same time. InterContinental Hotels Group partnered with Black style visionary Igee Okafor to bring its hotel experience to life through arrestingly beautiful and thumb-stopping travel content.
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Meaningful relationships stand the test of time
So many influencer partnerships are one-off, meaning there’s a single transaction, a single stay and then the arrangement is over and the influencer’s followers watch them move on to another hotel stay, another paid partnership. What if we looked at the influencers we put so much thought into selecting as long-term brand ambassadors for us; people who bring our unique guest experience to life over time? Here’s an example: What if hotels hosted the perfect influencer and their partner annually for their anniversary? Or, if a family-friendly resort hosted a perfectly-brand-aligned influencer family every summer for its annual beach vacation? How much more believable and convincing is the influencer’s perspective when they use words like “our beloved annual trip to [insert hotel]” and when they show themselves delighting in a hotel’s guest experience year after year, season after season? Imagine watching an influencer’s kids grow up a little each year, with the hotel as the all-important backdrop.
Ensure content lives on
So much influencer content gets pushed down the feed once it’s published and then the value comes to a halt. Once the algorithms have finished serving up the content, it’s almost like it’s gone forever… unless you plan for future use. In content marketing, we often use the turkey analogy: plan for opportunities to repurpose content exactly as you would with turkey leftovers at Thanksgiving. For influencer and creator content, this could mean baking things like this into a trade agreement upfront:
- The right to use and edit (e.g. cut down, add graphic design elements, use in paid advertising, etc.) the content files in perpetuity.
- An Instagram stories highlight on the influencer’s profile that highlights their stay with the hotel and lives on for several months (plus the same thing on the hotel’s own Instagram profile).
- A re-hit post, six months after their stay (“just reminiscing about my amazing trip to [insert hotel]; I can’t wait to go back”).
Partner with influencers target guests actually care about
The best influencer partners for a hotel appeal to that hotel’s primary target audience. While this might seem obvious, it’s too often overlooked. If a hotel’s primary guest is a traveling business consultant in town for a meeting and looking to add a little weeknight fun on top of their trip, partner up with someone around the same age who has a strong perspective on cool things to experience in your city. By contrast, partnering up with a Sprinter-van-traveling, homeschooling family with young kids may be interesting to some people, but not to your established target audience. In fact, that partnership could result in that potential guest writing you off as “not for them.”
Be prescriptive; and, sometimes, don’t
New York-based influencer marketing agency Fohr argues that you need both “mirror content” and “window content.” They define mirror content as knowing the exact framing, messaging and aesthetic needed for marketing purposes and wanting that reflected back in an influencer’s content. Mirror content can be perfect for bringing the guest journey to life or for capturing a particular aspect of your guest experience like a seasonal amenity, new menu launch or a rooms renovation. Window content is different—it creates a portal into a new perspective. It’s a way to empower a creator to make magic, in their own way, at a hotel. Give creators a key performance indicator and a few legal guardrails and let them create to entertain, offer their ultra-unique perspective and build trust with their following surrounding your hotel.
Track and measure results
The best indicator of content that’s actually meaningful to the people who saw it is called engagement rate. It’s the perfect measure of content resonance. It’s calculated as a percentage: the number of people who engaged with a particular post (by liking it, commenting on it, sharing it with a friend) divided by the influencer’s number of followers. Average engagement rate on Instagram is about 2.5%. Great influencer content should net a 4% to 5% engagement rate.
View influencers as artists, keep the value to your own social channels top-of-mind and structure influencer agreements to prioritize the perception-shifting power of long-lasting relationships. Now, you’re armed for influencer marketing success in 2024 and beyond.
Story contributed by Whitney Reynolds. Reynolds is the founder & strategy director of Somewhere Fun Social, LLC, a social + creative strategy consulting firm for hotels and restaurants.