The Best Platforms for Influencer Travel Marketing
Travel influencer tools can help brands launch effective campaigns and promote themselves in a competitive industry. But it’s also easy to make the mistake of choosing flash over substance, especially when influencer marketing is far more nuanced today than it was ten years ago.
If you’re ready to launch targeted and impactful campaigns, both influencer platforms and agencies assist marketers across the travel sector. Below, we’ll look at the difference between influencer agencies and platforms and how to choose the right support for your travel brand.
Influencer platform vs. influencer agency: What’s the difference?
Both influencer platforms and influencer agencies can help you launch or expand your social media marketing. However, the two resources offer fundamentally different services.
An influencer platform is a self-service software tool that can match brands with appropriate influencers. An influencer agency is a full-service company that helps marketers develop and manage custom campaigns.
When to use an influencer platform
Influencer platforms are workflow tools that streamline and automate your influencer marketing campaigns. For example, if you need influencers to promote a new restaurant, you might use the tool to shortlist several social media foodies, establish partnerships with them, and devise successful campaigns.
Influencer platforms typically work best for marketers with clearly defined, measurable goals. When you know what you want, it’s easier to leverage the platform’s features, customize your experience, and establish control over individual campaigns and larger initiatives alike.
When to hire an agency for support
Influencer agencies provide bespoke marketing support for brands. This model typically works best for marketers who need help conceptualizing and executing campaigns.
So, if you’re relatively new to influencer marketing or you’re trying a new strategy, an influencer agency can help you define your goals and develop lucrative partnerships.
How to choose a travel influencer platform
All travel influencer platforms provide influencer databases that brands can cherry-pick from. As you shop around and compare, consider core features like:
User interface: The interface should be transparent, intuitive, and responsive, so you can navigate the platform easily and select the best partners.
Influencer volume: The best platforms have a range of influencers across a variety of niches, making it easy to find available professionals with relevant followers.
Matching process: Influencer marketing is more effective when it’s specific. Influencer marketing platforms with sophisticated matching tools pair brands with influencers who have the right target demographics.
Campaign support: Whether you have a technical question or need recommendations on how to reach millennials, different platforms offer different levels of support.
The best influencer platform for every type of travel
When travel can include anything from short day trips to month-long cruises, travel influencers fare best with followers when they choose a specific niche. Below, we’ll look at the best platforms for every type of travel.
Best for international travel: Collabstr
Collabstr helps marketers find and hire top influencers across TikTok and Instagram. It’s a great choice for international travel brands looking for dynamic, stylish jetsetters to highlight exotic locales.
The platform’s functionalities and benefits include:
No hidden costs: Marketers can search lifestyle influencers for no charge, only paying if they move forward with a collab.
Vetted professionals: Every influencer goes through a strict screening process to ensure smoother relationships and better content.
Diverse lifestyles: From rental vans to five-star hotels, international brands can find an influencer who meshes with their products or services.
Collabstr is an excellent choice for travel industry marketers who want to infuse more glamor and excitement into their brand, but it does have a couple of limitations:
No mobile app: Some customers prefer a user-friendly mobile app to manage campaigns.
Small influencer volume: Some brands may have a difficult time finding valuable partnerships due to low influencer volume.
With Collabstr, the influencer posts their rates (e.g., $1,200 for a TikTok video), and the platform takes a percentage. Collabstr will not settle payment until all content is delivered, ensuring you get what you pay for.
Best for luxury travel: IZEA
Since 2006, IZEA has successfully matched brands with the right content creators. The digital marketing platform provides access to an array of successful influencers who can showcase luxury travel brands.
When you work with IZEA, you’ll get access to:
Comprehensive services: Find influencers, negotiate contracts, manage and track campaigns, and settle payments in one place.
Exquisite content: Luxury travelers tick off bucket-list destinations and inspire trips with eye-catching photos and videos.
Full-service marketing available: IZEA’s flexible business model allows brands to scale services based on campaign needs.
Creator marketplace: Easily filter and sort creators based on platform, niche, pricing, etc.
IZEA is best for luxury brands that may need help crafting more effective, targeted campaigns for discerning travelers, but there are a few downsides:
Audience bases: IZEA’s influencers have follower bases in the millions, but many of these followers may be interested in luxury content more for escapism than for inspiration.
Clunky platform: Users may notice small platform bugs, such as improperly labeled messages or hard-to-find analytics.
IZEA’s plans start at $130 per month, with creators posting individual rates based on follower base and experience.
Best for regional and local travel: Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds is an influencer platform that partners with local influencers (called hummingbirds), largely with follower counts between 500 and 5,000.
The platform matches brands with authentic content creators who rely on peer-to-peer influence to drive more than just brand awareness. For example, a thrifty 30-something might promote a limited-time discount at a nearby amusement park.
The Hummingbirds platform makes it simple to:
Set up a campaign: Specify the influencer content type, platform directives, and brand goals to ensure smoother execution.
Match with local influencers: Sophisticated software makes it easy to find hummingbirds that support your marketing strategies.
View social content and impact: Monitor the campaign’s performance and metrics to improve real-time impact and future marketing initiatives.
The Hummingbirds platform is best suited for brands that want to drive regional impact, such as local tourism boards or economic development organizations.
For example, if a town wants more people to move to the area, they might target influencers within a 50-mile radius and run a campaign about the town’s bustling business district.
Local influencers can also promote stand-alone attractions, such as an amusement park or performing arts center. Instead of hyping up a luxury Swiss spa, they showcase attainable destinations that their audience can visit in minutes rather than months.
Local influencers are also much more affordable and often accept freebies as compensation. So you can hire several social media personalities with different voices to inspire the kind of wanderlust and curiosity that leads to conversions.
Alisha Espey, the program coordinator at the Downtown Davenport Partnership, put it this way: “As a marketing professional, the experiences the birds shared on their socials was better than anything I could have even scripted.”
The Hummingbirds platform offers affordable custom pricing for each brand and campaign. Once you set the campaign details, there are no hidden fees or surprise costs.
Best for travel content creators: ViralMango
ViralMango provides travel content creators with advanced analytics tools and media kit support. So it’s easier for creators to find brand partnerships, cement their pricing, and focus more on creating quality content. The platform makes it simple to verify demographics, engagement rates, and post-performance Instagram results all in one place.
ViralMango gives you access to powerful tools like:
Media kits: Create a custom Instagram or TikTok media kit, or choose one of ViralMango’s media kit templates. Use a single link to promote yourself to brands across the spectrum.
Money calculator: Prices factor in follower counts, engagement rates, and impression ratios (e.g., comments/likes) for fair compensation and transparent pricing.
Fake followers checker: Verify fake accounts and preserve authenticity with ViralMango’s intuitive checker.
ViralMango is excellent for influencers who want to establish themselves as travel aficionados. The media kits and data can both boost your profile and help you set better rates. However, the platform does have a few limitations:
Uneven analytics: Analytics capabilities vary widely across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Collaboration volume: The platform is set up more for influencers than brands, meaning you’re less likely to find partnerships on the platform.
ViralMango offers a free Starter Media Kit plan to influencers, as well as a Pro plan for $9.99 per month.
Tips for choosing travel influencers to partner with
Influencer platforms can drastically reduce a marketer’s workload, but marketers are still responsible for establishing their strategy and controlling their campaigns. To find the right content creator for your destination, start by assessing their engagement numbers, previous content, and target audience.
For example, if you’re marketing a craft brewery, you might start by searching for local influencers with related hashtags (e.g., #IPA, #microbrew). From there, you can evaluate their audience demographics, engagement, and content quality to see if it fits your brand and strategy.
The stronger the connection between an influencer and their followers, the more impactful their content will be. Even if follower counts are relatively modest, brands may get more value from nano or local influencers than they do from celebrity or macro-influencers.
How to build a positive relationship with content creators
Whether you go through an agency or platform, partnerships are two-way streets. Here are a few tips to build positive relationships:
Clear directives: Map out the delivery schedules, hashtags, compensation packages, and communication methods, so everyone’s on the same page before campaign kick-off.
Creative freedom: Brands are responsible for general guidelines, but give influencers enough creative license to connect with followers. After all, that’s what made them popular in the first place!
Listen: The best influencers know their audiences backward and forward. So if they have suggestions or feedback about your travel experiences or content strategy, it’s probably worth considering.
Fair compensation: It takes a lot of work to shoot high-quality videos and photos. Fair pricing ensures better relationships and more authentic travel influencer marketing.
Learn why local influence is the best way to generate excitement about your destination
Local influencers are more than just relatable to their followers—they also live nearby and are intimately familiar with the area and its residents. Plus, they have an extended network of friends and followers who are entranced by their exciting and interactive content.
When Hummingbirds launched the Experience Grand Rapids campaign, a dozen hummingbirds took part in this fun and creative initiative.
By using locals to promote their own city, Grand Rapids piqued the curiosity of fellow Midwesterners. Instead of general remarks about the cool scenes, the comments were about how they couldn’t wait to visit themselves.
From Madison to Davenport, local influencers offer an expert perspective—not just about what’s around them, but also how to get there, whether it’s reasonably priced, and whether it’s right for a family, a couple, or a group of friends.
They drive more interest because they know their audiences in real life and build authentic connections.
Ready to find the best local influencers for your travel marketing campaign? Book a call with the Hummingbirds team today!
