Travel & Hospitality Influencer Marketing: Ultimate 2025 Guide

If you browse Instagram, visit your YouTube homepage, or scroll through TikTok, you're bound to come across travel and hospitality content. Videos, pictures, and stories from around the world are extremely popular and allow brands associated with travel an outstanding opportunity to promote their products and services.

Travel influencers weave personal stories and experiences into the unique destinations of the world. Brands can take advantage of this by inserting their luggage, hotel, or airline into the narrative, connecting with the creator's audience. Companies can also use travel influencers and a campaign platform to promote their offerings in all types of situations, including seasonal promotions, soft launches, rebrands, and press tips.

Each platform comes with advantages tailored to different niches, products, and services within the travel industry. Some of the most common travel content comes in the form of:

• Short-form videos:

  Instagram Reels and TikToks are quick, attention-grabbing clips that can be great for destination reveals or accommodation highlights.

• Stories:

  Instagram Stories are authentic looks into a creator's life as they happen, lasting only 24 hours before disappearing. These can be great for promoting limited-time offers or showing daily routine snippets.

• Long-form videos:

  YouTube vlogs can document full travel experiences or cross-country travel, such as the entire experience on a cruise ship or a trek through a distant mountain valley.

• Blog posts:

  Blogs can provide detailed information about destinations or share stories about experiences on the road. Blogs are great opportunities for affiliate marketers.

Combining these different content types with a content syndication platform can create a comprehensive campaign that will enhance your business's brand recognition and sales.

Put your brand on the map—use Later to launch travel influencer campaigns that drive real bookings. Schedule a demo today.

What is influencer marketing in travel & hospitality?

By partnering with influencers that specialize in travel and hospitality niches through an influencer marketing platform, you can drive awareness, engagement, and conversions for your company's offerings. There are several different types of promotions available to achieve success:

• User-generated content (UGC):

  UGC is content created by unpaid users and customers that promotes a company. Examples of UGC include customer reviews, forum discussions, or unboxing videos.

• Affiliate marketing:

  Companies choose affiliates who then promote their products and services through links. The sales and traffic generated from these referral links allow the companies to accurately pay commissions.

• Influencer campaigns:

  These campaigns are partnerships between a creator and a brand, where the creator promotes the brand's offerings by weaving them into their content.

Users who follow a specific influencer do so out of trust and interest. This allows brands to take advantage of that relationship and promote their products in an authentic atmosphere. Using influencer marketing services can help you create a strategy to make sure you take full advantage of the creators and content for best results.

Which travel influencers are right for you?

Travel influencers target all sorts of niches on different social media platforms. Knowing the difference between the main types of travel creators will enable you to find influencers with the most receptive audiences:

• Adventure travelers:

  These creators specialize in activities such as hiking, surfing, backpacking, and off-the-beaten-path excursions.

• Luxury travelers:

  You'll find these influencers living it up in five-star resorts or first-class cabins and lounges.

• Solo travelers:

  Tune into their content to learn tips and tricks on how to travel and live abroad independently.

• Family creators:

  These creators show you how to travel with kids and make the most out of family vacations.

• Van life travelers:

  Influencers who live and travel in vans give an idea of what it's like to mix travel with work and life long-term.

• Couples:

  Couples can offer suggestions on where to go for fun or romantic getaways.

While some influencers might seem great for your cause from the outset, it's a good idea to dig deeper to find out who truly can help. Use an analytics platform to look into various metrics—such as engagement rate, audience demographics, click-through rate, and follower growth rate—to better determine the best fit.

Hotel influencers and Instagram: Real stories for real ROI

Hospitality influencers boast diverse accommodations and properties to boost bookings and drive visibility for hotel and resort brands. On Instagram, creators can use a mix of Reels and carousel posts to showcase the hotel's amenities, food, rooms, and grounds. This in-room experience storytelling and coverage can generate interest from future travelers who tune in to the creator's social media platforms for ideas. Location tags can also increase exposure when people search for stays in that area.

Finding the best-suited hospitality influencers and audiences can be challenging and time-consuming. Turning to a trusted platform can be hugely convenient. Discover how Later can help your hotel find the right creators and track ROI.

Hotel influencer marketing campaign essentials

When planning a hotel influencer campaign, consider these fundamentals:

First, know your goals. Are you hoping to increase awareness of your properties? Get more bookings? Attract a new audience?

Then, you'll need to consider your budget, the resources you can allocate to the campaign, and the timeline and workflow.

Once you have those, developing a content brief that includes your target audience, social media platforms, and tone you want to portray. Determine the total number of posts, stories, reels, vlogs, or blogs you want, as well as the number of influencers you plan to include in the project.

Knowing how you want to collaborate with the influencers is also essential. For example, you can use:

• Room exchanges: These are complimentary stays in exchange for content, and you won't pay the influencer aside from that.

• Paid partnerships: These are flat fees or performance bonuses that your company pays for content or for being featured in content.

• Brand ambassador programs: These are long-term partnerships with creators that involve creating and releasing various types of content over time.

Influencer outreach tools can help you connect with your customers' favorite creators without spending a lot of time on the process. For example, Later's Influencer Index features over 10 million influencers, allowing you to narrow down your search with AI-driven filters to find the best match. These tools also enable you to streamline outreach and automate recruitment, allowing you to focus your time and effort on other areas.

Creating a successful travel influencer program

When working with travel influencers, you can opt for one-off promotions or establish long-term relationships. Often, partnering with a travel influencer over an extended period leads to more success. Not only will you have fewer contract negotiations to deal with, but you won't need to constantly conduct an onboarding process. The influencer's audience will also become more familiar with your brand as they repeatedly push your product or service.

Creating a tiered program can also help you reach your goals and promote your brand to the most relevant audiences. Three tiers that most successful programs take advantage of include:

• Brand ambassadors: These are creators who represent and promote a brand by supporting its offerings and personifying the company's identity.

• VIP creators: These are influencers with proven results who receive early access and exclusive opportunities to review products and services.

• Repeat guests: These are collaborators who return to your hotel or property multiple times, promoting it through authentic recommendations.

An Influencer Management Platform is an excellent way to keep your program organized and efficient. This allows you to manage relationships and communications to better optimize content.

Does your brand need a travel & hospitality influencer marketing team?

The best influencer marketing campaigns require teams or agencies of people to work together for the best results. Some of the top roles in these agencies include:

• Influencer marketing manager: This position involves developing and executing strategies that use influencers for campaign success.

• Social partnership lead: This role manages the relationship between the brand and the creators involved in the campaign.

• Travel content strategist: This strategist aligns the content with the brand's overall goals and strategies.

Often, agencies will run campaigns for multiple travel brands. To do this effectively, they rely on Later to manage and scale their influencer partnerships.

The effectiveness of influencer marketing on hotel brands

The effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaign for hotel brands will depend on how well you plan and take steps to align the creators and content to your overall goals. Analytics tools such as an ROI calculator can help you determine the success of your marketing. You can also determine how well your campaign is doing through metrics like positive UGC coming out, the amount of direct bookings from content, and organic lift—the increase in organic traffic, conversions, and other key performance indicators. However, using a platform like Later can make influencer marketing much easier.

For example, Later helped a sleep aid brand scale and increase awareness through influencer marketing. Later helped the brand strategize to target parents with children aged four and older along with those passionate about their health. They used 217 micro-influencers to create 222 Instagram posts. The results were over 600,000 impressions and nearly 100,000 engagements. The average cost per engagement was between $0.20 - $0.25. This campaign could easily shift to target budget travelers who spend time in noisy hostels and may use sleep aids.

What types of brands can benefit from a travel influencer program?

Travel influencers can promote tons of products and services to their respective niches. Some of the most common industries that benefit from partnering with travel influencers include:

• Hotels and resorts: These properties, from luxury to boutique to eco hotels, offer comfort and amenities for anyone. For example, Marriott International offers many types of accommodations that could appeal to travelers of all varieties.

• Tour operators and destination marketers: Some travelers prefer to have their trips organized and designed for them, which is where tour operators and destination marketers come in. For example, Contiki offers tours across 75 countries to adults aged 18 to 35.

• Airlines and travel services: Flights are one of the most common modes of transportation for travelers. Travel influencers can easily promote airlines as they hop from city to city. For example, Emirates offers a luxurious in-flight experience that travel influencers can showcase.

• Cruise lines: Cruise lines package dining, entertainment, and travel onto a mega ship, creating a fun atmosphere for all who attend. For example, Royal Caribbean's fleet visits over 270 destinations, allowing influencers to display the amusement in between stops.

• Travel insurance: Unexpected things can happen on trips, so having insurance coverage is crucial to reduce any financial stress. For example, travel creators can partner with World Nomads, which insures extreme activities like sky diving, bungee jumping, and hiking while traveling.

• Luggage brands: People need to carry all their things from place to place, which is why luggage brands are an excellent fit for travel influencers. For example, creators can promote Away's luggage products, showing the sleek designs and durability.

Grow your travel brand with influencer marketing

Travel and hospitality influencers have a loyal fan base that looks to them for travel advice on how to maximize their experiences. Partnering with these creators can help your brand gain exposure and sell more by targeting the right audiences for your offerings. Whether you're selling tours, flights, luggage, insurance, hotel stays, or cruises, there is a travel and hospitality influencer creating content that can help you generate more profits.

Taking advantage of an established marketing platform like Later can help you scale your campaigns from a single dashboard. Later helps you find and recruit the best creators for your operation, streamlines onboarding, centralizes campaign management, and provides real-time performance analytics to help you make informed decisions.

Book a demo today and discover how Later can enhance your travel and hospitality influencer marketing campaigns!