Under the

As the value of social media influencers continues to grow and evolve, so too are the number and ways in which travel brands partner with influencers to plug their products. From blockbuster campaigns featuring influencers with millions of followers to more targeted approaches, travel suppliers are embracing influencers’ reach and sway. 

At the same time, they’re increasingly aware of tactics influencers can use to artificially inflate their followings. But despite the potential risks and complications of engaging with them, travel companies appear to believe that the rewards far outweigh the risks. Many are continuing to advance existing influencer investments, while others are just beginning to dip their toes into the influencer arena.

Moreover, while suppliers have traditionally been the segment that most often engages influencers, there are ways that agents can, and perhaps should, get in on the trend, especially if they want to reach social-media savvy generations of new clients. 

“I only see the influencer marketing getting bigger,” said Jade Broadus, creative director of Travel Mindset, a company launched in 2012 that connects travel companies with influencers. It has helped create campaigns for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, Celebrity Cruises and numerous destination marketing organizations (DMOs).

Broadus said there’s no reason travel agents shouldn’t embrace influencers as well.

“I think there’s a huge opportunity for travel agents,” she said, adding that influencers could play a large role in helping to tell the story of “why a travel agent is important now.”

“I’m surprised that more are not jumping on the bandwagon,” she said. People in their 30s want the services of travel agents, she asserted. “They just don’t know that they want that.” Which is where she said influencers can come into play. 

“By travel agents partnering with influencers, they can gain a level of trust. People trust influencers like they trust their best friend.” 

That was exactly the thinking behind a campaign launched by Avoya Travel this past August. In an attempt to introduce younger travelers to the idea of using agents, Avoya partnered with a number of travel bloggers in a campaign focused on highlighting the value of its agents, and it sponsored posts on blogs such as Walking On Travels and Carmen’s Luxury Travel touting the benefits of working with an Avoya agent.

Avoya’s senior vice president of marketing, Sam McCully, said that the campaign was “very successful,” having reached hundreds of thousands of consumers. 

“The marketing and advertising landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace,” McCully said. “And with the scale that is now here with influencer programs and platforms, it was really time for us to tap into this trend and leverage it to grow our brand and really start to change the conversation around the value of a travel agent.”

McCully said that given the success of the campaign, Avoya plans to continue to work with influencers, adding that while Avoya is doing it on a larger scale, there is no reason why individual agents and agencies shouldn’t look at ways to engage influencers who reach their customer base, whether local or with a larger targeted audience.

Like others in the travel industry who have invested in influencer campaigns, McCully touted not just the potential reach that influencers have but also the quality of the content that they produce. 

“Working with influencers is a wonderful way to reach new audiences on a personal level and convey a relatable, authentic point of view,” said Carmen Roig, senior vice president of marketing and sales for Crystal Cruises, which has been engaging both “macro-influencers,” with larger followings, and “micro-influencers,” with smaller, more targeted followings, to raise awareness of its river, ocean and yacht products.

Crystal recently partnered on three social media campaigns with Kiersten Rich of The Blonde Abroad, who was named a “Top 10 Travel Influencer of 2017” by Forbes. In Rich’s case, she experienced Crystal’s ocean, river and yacht products, which Roig said made Rich “a passionate brand advocate.”

“Working with influencers is a wonderful way to reach new audiences on a personal level and convey a relatable, authentic point of view,” Roig said. “With the advent of new tools like Instagram Stories and Facebook Live, Crystal is able to leverage influencer relationships to share real-time moments aboard the ship, giving audiences a peek at what the Crystal experience is truly like.”

To help its travel company clients avoid investing in fraudulent influencers, Travel Mindset has a multistep vetting process that begins with analyzing influencers’ social channels. In addition to critiquing the content to decide if it is of high quality, interesting and engaging, the agency works to verify the followers by scrutinizing comments and clicking on multiple followers’ channels.

There are also several companies whose main service is to verify account followers, which Travel Mindset and others rely on as a crucial step in the vetting process. 

Travel Mindset also looks at whether or not the influencer has a strong following and engagement across multiple platforms. Broadus said a good sign that someone is a professional and is “actually influential” is if they are popular on more than one social channel, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube and on their own blog or vlog (video blog).

Finally, Travel Mindset will set up an in-person or phone meeting to ensure that the influencer is the real deal and to gauge if they are the right fit with a travel brand. 

Dalene and Pete Heck, who co-founded Hecktic Travels, are both influencers themselves and also work to connect travel companies and DMOs with influencers. Dalene Heck said that the New York Times investigation and growing awareness of ways influencers can game the system are making travel brands and DMOs smarter about how they partner with influencers.

“For anyone who wasn’t aware,” Heck said, “I think that [New York Times investigation] really opened a lot of people’s eyes. Overall, everybody is getting smarter to some of the games that influencers play to look better.” 

For example, Heck said she will ask influencers for analytics of their feeds so she can track engagement. If she sees a sudden spike in followers, that can be a red flag. 

Ultimately, she said, “it’s all evolving for the better, where I think we’re eventually going to see more legitimate numbers from influencers.”

The reasons those numbers matter so much is because, just as in advertising, influencers often set their compensation based on the size of their audiences. 

It takes more than a few freebies to persuade influencers with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of followers to showcase a product. These are often sophisticated and multiplatform entrepreneurs who can command a hefty price tag for their endorsements.

“We pay all of our influencers,” Broadus said, adding that the days of being able to get high quality influencers to post in exchange for free travel or products are long gone. 

Her company creates very detailed contracts between the influencers and travel brands so that all parties know exactly what is expected and at what price. 

“There is no guessing game in terms of how much are they going to post, when are they going to post,” Broadus said. “We lay that all out. There’s a lot of strategy that goes on behind the scenes before the influencer even arrives in the destination. If the influencer normally shares 10 Instagram stories a day, and a client wanted 20, that’s just not going to work. We craft the campaign deliverables based on what the influencers are doing for noncampaign posts.”

Both Broadus and Heck said that depending on what the travel company is hoping to achieve, a high number of followers might be much less valuable than a certain type of follower. 

For example, Heck said that some of the campaigns she has been working on more recently are much more targeted, looking to reach very specific audiences through what are commonly referred to as “micro-influencers.” She had one travel company that wanted Hecktic Travels to track down a birding influencer, for example, because the destination they were pushing is big with birders.

With growing competition, influencers are having to really produce much more and much better content, including more video content on top of photography and editorial.

More money flowing into this space has motivated more people to try to build a business on influencer marketing. That, too, presents a challenge for travel companies. 

Crystal’s Roig said, “The challenge today with influencer marketing is how big the industry has become. Crystal is contacted daily by influencers, travel bloggers and content creators who are looking to partner with the brand. It’s a good problem to have, as it shows our collaborations are resonating in the space, but it also means that Crystal has to be selective and fully research and vet each influencer to ensure they align with the brand and that their content resonates with the appropriate audiences.”