The travel marketer’s ultimate guide to influencers

On social media, travel posts are everywhere. Even the most casual user expects a few sunset or tropical cocktail photos sprinkled into their feeds at any given time. 

These posts may be pretty commonplace, but they’re also powerful for social media users. You can likely recall a post or two that made you reconsider your own travel plans. Whether it was a friend’s shoe-string day trip or a relative’s month-long luxury cruise, travel posts and endorsements often spark desires people didn’t even realize they had!

Here, we offer a travel marketing crash course to explore the power of influencers and how to leverage it based on your niche.

What is travel influencer marketing?

In travel influencer marketing, individual influencers create inspiring and instructive content for brands in the travel industry. They visit an array of destinations, curating tips, experiences, and insights for their audiences. While you might associate influencers with social media platforms, travel influencers can also pop up on blogs, podcasts, and public events. 

Even more than other types of lifestyle influencer marketing, travel content is experiential and taps into people’s emotions. When done well, it should inspire people to want to take action — booking their own trips to visit the destination. 

Travel influencer marketing also continues offline. Once the influencer is home, they share stories about their trips with family, colleagues, and friends over dinner, phone calls, or coffee. 

No matter whether the influence is online or off, the goal of travel influencer marketing is to lead the audience on a visual purchase journey, showing them what their trip could look like and even subtly suggesting how travelers might spend their money.

Who are travel influencers?

Travel influencers are content creators who largely focus on travel experiences. Influencers can sometimes be accidental, in that they inadvertently amass followers for their unique photos or insights. More often, they curate their social media feed based on their ideal demographic. 

Some of the most famous travel influencers find a niche and stick with it. For example, Mark Wiens jetsets to street food stands, often eating unusual dishes to the delight of his 10.6 million YouTube subscribers. The Bucket List Family offers advice on how to travel with kids on a budget, and racked up 3 million Instagram followers in the process. 

Both examples are considered mega influencers due to their high follower counts, but there are also other tiers of influencers with smaller follower counts. This is a common way for the influencer industry to segment influencers, though you can also differentiate them based on the type of content they publish (for example, are they niche-only? Or do they post about their lives with niche content sprinkled in?), or even their location. 

Local travel influencers will typically only post about destinations or activities that make sense for their city or town. For example, a travel influencer may only work with a tourism board if their nearest airport offers direct flights to the destination. 

What do travel influencers do?

Travel influencers partner with companies to promote a specific travel or hospitality brand. The travel influencer negotiates rates — whether it’s financial compensation, discounts, or free gifts — and the brand gets positive exposure to a new audience. Today, it’s more common for brands to pay influencers than give out free products. 

Fledgling influencers without strong followings may initiate brand partnerships, but more often, brands reach out to established personalities to hash out terms and conditions. Influencers then create content that adheres to the scope of their contract. 

Let’s say a travel influencer amassed a following by scoping out the best boutique shops in any given destination. She models her finds, shares her methodologies, and encourages her followers to go on their own treasure hunts. A cruise company with multiple ports of call might offer her a free interior cabin room in exchange for branded content. Over the week, the influencer might photograph her newest outfits in the ship’s dining room, patio, bar, etc., and hashtag the cruise company in every Instagram post. 

Travel influencers may earn enough to live on, but they also may do it as a side hustle or even a hobby. A full-time influencer generates enough posts and strikes enough partnerships to pay their bills, but a part-timer or hobbyist may only have an hour or two a week to spare. Travel marketers may have to adjust their expectations depending on how much time the influencer can devote to any given campaign. 

The rise of influencers in the travel and tourism industry 

Influencers largely began as travel bloggers and website owners before transitioning into social media content creators. As platform technology advanced, it was easier and more effective to shrink content into bite-sized snaps, videos, and tips instead of writing, illustrating, and editing long posts or vlogs. 

Of course, the more popular social media posts became, the more saturated the landscape became. Today, influencers and marketers need to be strategic, particularly when it’s harder to measure an influencer’s ROI than, say, a digital ad with trackable links. If you choose the wrong influencer, the content can come off as either irrelevant, unnatural, or downright untrustworthy. 

How influencers support different types of travel and tourism businesses 

Whether the audience is adrenaline junkies or budget-oriented parents, there’s an influencer out there sharing helpful insights and engaging content. Below, we’ll look at a few niches and examine how influencers support different aspects of the travel industry.

Generating excitement for activities and excursions 

Travel influencers can partner with festivals, museums, adventure brands, music venues, and theme parks to generate excitement for new activities and excursions. 

For example, a local influencer might visit a nearby theme park to try out the park’s tallest roller coaster. They might add a little more context to amp up the video’s interest — such as how they’re conquering their notorious fear of heights. 

Our local influencers visited the Alternating Currents fest in Davenport, Iowa. This music, film, and comedy event was a source of hometown pride for the attendees, and the hummingbirds had a blast exploring (and documenting) the city’s thriving culture and participating businesses. 

Similarly, hummingbirds in Des Moines, Iowa, visited Adventureland to explore the food, coasters, shows, and water park. Both these campaigns saw excellent engagement numbers. Followers commented about their own experiences visiting or working at these local hotspots. 

Highlighting smooth transportation services 

It’s totally understandable to worry about missed connections, unknown drivers, and cramped spaces when traveling. Even the best vacations usually entail some degree of transportation hassle: delayed flights, canceled trains, sketchy car services, erratic buses. 

Influencer partnerships showcase how brands streamline the process and correct these issues. For example, Amtrak might partner with a travel content creator to show how their trains precisely match up to the schedule. 

Lyft famously partnered with trans influencer Zaya Perysian to promote its new Women+ Connect. This algorithm feature made it more likely for women and non-binary riders to pair with fellow women or non-binary drivers for a less stressful ride. In Perysian’s TikTok video, the influencer stresses how much safer and more comfortable she feels with this option, especially if she’s embarking on a long night out — a message that undoubtedly speaks volumes to other women travelers!

Showing the value of lodging accommodations 

Whether it’s a hotel or an Airbnb, travel influencers highlight the perks of choosing a specific type of lodging. For example, an influencer might highlight their gourmet  room service breakfast or the unique decor in their Vrbo rental’s living room.

Instagrammer Andrew Keenan-Bolger showed off a delightful New Orleans hotel destination with an artful photo. At the Henry Howard Hotel, his tastefully decorated room and four-post bed showed off the lodging’s style and vibe. With a clarinet wall decoration and Andrew reading atop a neatly made bed, the hotel appears ideal for travelers seeking a smart and sophisticated vacation. 

Building an appetite for local cuisine 

Travel influencers inspire their followers to visit local bars and restaurants when they travel. They zoom in on local establishments, whether they specialize in beer, dessert, or dinner, and speak to the decor, personalities, and hidden touches that make these gems so special. 

When influencers visit, they often bring out the best in a local business and share it online. For example, a foodie might partner with a farm-to-table restaurant, visiting and photographing the actual farm before enjoying a meal at the restaurant. 

Experience Grand Rapids, the marketing organization for Grand Rapids, Michigan, invited local hummingbirds to visit one or two participating businesses for their Flights of Flavor campaign. The local influencers received plenty of positive feedback about their food and beverage experiences, with many followers commenting that they couldn’t wait to try the bar or restaurant out for themselves.  

3 wanderlust-inspiring influencer campaigns 

The best influencer campaigns wake up people’s passion for travel, introduce a new brand, or repackage the brand in a new light. We’ll look at a few successful examples so you can see why they worked. 

1. Travelocity builds a community of influencer “Gnational Gnomads”

Travelocity’s travel influencer marketing campaign partnered with influencers to humanize their brand, repositioning it as less transactional and more fun. In this campaign, travelers took selfies with the brand’s now-infamous gnome in different travel destinations and linked posts with a common hashtag. 

Influencers had creative freedom and treated followers to funny or silly displays that also highlighted some of the destination’s most memorable spots. The campaign worked because the brand took on a new, more exciting dimension by focusing on what makes travel fun. 

2. Hilton takes over TikTok with a 10-minute video 

Hilton may have debuted in 1919, but it’s done a demonstrably good job at keeping up with the times. In February 2023, the brand released a 10-minute TikTok video that spanned locations and featured appearances from some of the most beloved TikTok creators. 

Receiving around 4 million views in just two days, the campaign worked because the video threw constant curveballs, holding the viewer’s attention span with its creative use of duets, jump cuts, and remixes. The content felt right at home on TikTok, probably because the brand gave influencers a fair bit of design freedom. 

The video’s constant flip-flops weren’t for pure shock value either — the marketing strategy highlighted unique ways to enjoy a hotel stay, enough to spark interest in the company’s 24 hotel brands and more than 7,600 locations. 

3. Destination Madison invites local influencers to explore the city

Destination Madison is a partnership between city leaders, staff, and community members to boost tourism in Wisconsin’s capital. The Destination Madison team invited local influencers from nearby cities to spend the day or weekend in exchange for perks (e.g., gift cards, accommodations, etc.). 

Local influencers lived close to Madison, and so did their followers. Had national influencers taken their place, the campaign may have driven awareness of the city, but not necessarily many bookings.

This localized audience relevance was the key to success. Destination Madison hoped to eliminate barriers for nearby tourists, showing people how easy and fun it was to plan a trip and enjoy themselves. (Maybe that’s why the campaign enjoyed above 12% engagement versus the industry standard of .75%!) 

Partner with local influencers to drive engagement with regional travelers 

The world of travel is more accessible than ever before, but that doesn’t mean you have to think global. Today, there is a strong preference for nano- and micro-influencers over macro-influencers and celebrities. 

Local influencers engage with their followers in fundamentally different ways than traditional marketers. Because they create content for their neighbors, their content naturally addresses what matters. For example, a local influencer in Milwaukee may share what Saturday morning traffic looks like on a day trip to Madison. 

Local influencers are subject matter experts in their city or region, making their opinions and advice about travel brands, businesses, and destinations more valuable than their national counterparts. Digital nomads who visit new countries every other day may provide vicarious fun for followers, but their lives can seem more like fantasy than real life.

In addition, partnering with local micro-influencers is often more cost-effective. Brands pay a lot less when influencers are more motivated by helping followers than becoming the next international sensation. 

At Hummingbirds, our intuitive platform expertly matches influencers with the most relevant brands. We work with destination marketing organizations (DMOs), tourism boards, and local chambers to identify people who can organically speak to their target audience.

Whether you largely market an Instagram-worthy attraction — like a 300-year-old carousel in the town center, your town’s coffee scene, or the incredible hiking destinations just outside the city — the right marketing campaign can improve a brand’s conversion rates or drive interest in new travel businesses 

If you’re ready to amp up your travel marketing with the power of local influencers, check out our strategy resources to learn more!