• Assessing the Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing in Travel   

Excerpt from PhocusWire

The videos and images seem to be everywhere.

A young woman looks out over sparkling blue seas from a cruise cabin balcony in an Instagram Reel. A man gives a 30-second tour of a five-star hotel room set to trendy sound on TikTok. On Lemon8, a faceless-carousel of Caribbean images provides a full itinerary of luxe options.

It all looks pretty spectacular, doesn’t it? Well, travel brands are banking on it.

Windstar Cruises is the latest company to bolster its influencer marketing strategy, recently announcing a partnership with Jerne, which helps to facilitate connections with influencers and was among PhocusWire’s Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2024.

In doing so, Windstar is taking something of a leap of faith.

Measuring the return on investment from influencer marketing is challenging, and PhocusWright research shows 55% of travelers favor recommendations from loved ones when seeking inspiration on social media about where to go. 

Yet some experts say influencer marketing is an investment travel companies would be wise to consider. The content creators who amass large followings often build trust that's akin to friendship — at least on the level of recommendations — plus they hold special appeal to younger travelers and get to places the travelers' friends and families may not, opening audiences to new venues.

Travel is such a “visual purchasing journey” that influencer marketing can have a big impact, said Brennen Bliss, CEO of travel-focused digital marketing agency Propellic. But his assessment came with a caveat: The reach of influencer marketing can't be quantified the way, say, a digital advertisement on Google can.

“It just has to be treated very differently [from] product performance marketing,” Bliss said. “It's an investment in an attempt to attract people, [so] it's not like a mathematical type of investment.”

Influencer marketing as part of "full funnel" approach

While the marketing influencers do on social media is digital by its nature, it has more in common with traditional marketing - think billboards or flashy magazine spreads - than modern digital ads in which clicks, conversions and other calls to action can be tallied in real time.

One approach builds awareness, while the other is more direct about seeking a sale — yet both can be important to a successful campaign.

Last year's Phocuswright report notes that social media is helpful primarily in the "passive" planning that takes place when travelers are deciding where to go but before they are ready to book.

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