Influencer Marketing - the fastest growing trend within the Tourism Industry

The trend of Influencer marketing has taken off in the last decade and is currently one of the fastest growing activities within the digital marketing space. The movement has been on the rise due to the growth of social media and the influence of word-of-mouth marketing. For marketers “brands are no longer what companies tell consumers but rather what consumers tell each other”.

But what is Influencer marketing in relation to the tourism industry?

A travel Influencer is an online personality that creates content to promote products and services within the tourism industry. They have a dedicated following on their social media platforms, whether it be YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or blogs and websites.

Unlike celebrities, they tend to work within a niche market and are subject matter experts that have worked extremely hard to build up a dedicated following. For example, an Influencer may be specific to adventure tourism, with all their followers also interested in this niche. Their content promotes and highlights different travel inspirations and advice to their followers, with the aim of growing interest in the product or service.

Why should you consider using a travel Influencer?

There are many benefits to using this type of marketing:

• Increased brand awareness, directly with your target market

• A well respected Influencer can be extremely beneficial for your organisation's brand image

• It is the most relevant and competitive source of marketing for the younger generations, and it’s here to stay!

How your brand can benefit from our unique partnership with Blogilicious

We understand that for marketing professionals, planning and executing an Influencer marketing campaign can be daunting, due to the fragmented nature of the Influencer eco-system. We have therefore built a long-standing partnership with blogilicious.com, the leading international agency for high quality travel Influencers. Our partnership helps destinations and travel brands leverage the Influencer market to help generate awareness and sales.

Blogilicious works with over 4,500 travel influencers from across the world and indexes more than 500 articles and videos every single day on its website.

Through our partnership, we can provide a range of different services, some of these include:

• Identifying an Influencer that reaches your target audience

• Organising influencer trips

• Executing social media shout-outs

• Managing brand ambassadorship programmes

• Producing blogs or vlogs for the clients’ websites and channels

• Organising and executing competitions and giveaways

• Delivering detailed analytics for your campaign

Over the past few years, we have worked with a variety of different clients, helping to promote their destinations using Influencer marketing. Some of our projects include:

Guyana – Awareness Generation

Guyana has one of only four pristine rainforests left in the world. Tourists can enjoy a lively coastal Caribbean vibe combined with a wilderness Amazonian experience staying in community-owned ecolodges. However, Guyana was very unknown as a tourism destination.

Acorn was commissioned by the Guyana Tourism Authority, to help better promote the country. We worked alongside blogilicious.com to deliver an influencer marketing campaign that positioned Guyana and an exceptional ecotourism destination for adventure lovers, find out more here.

The Great Ethiopian Run

The Great Ethiopian Run takes place annually in Addis Ababa. It is Africa’s biggest road race and is a mass participation event that attracts around 45,000 runners. To raise awareness of the GER 10k International we identified four adventure travel influencers to participate in the November 2019 race. They were contracted with a clear brief to provide pre-event, event and post-event social media coverage and deliver both videos and blogs that could be used to build content on the event. 

Germany - #visitgermanyfromhome

Due to the lack of tourism throughout the pandemic, the German National Tourism Board were keen to keep up the promotion of the destination. They came up with a strategy for a campaign through Amazon Alexa. Blogilicious.com commissioned six leading travel Instagrammers, and created an Instagram-led campaign that promoted destination Germany using the Alexa app. It kept Germany front of mind amongst potential travellers during the pandemic lockdowns.

Rwanda – Digitalisation of Tourism Services in Rwanda

Acorn has been digitalising Rwanda’s tourism offer through the creation of a Data Management System and app. To help promote the app have organised a promotional trip by a leading adventure travel vloggers. They will be promoting the app and Rwanda’s offering through their YouTube and social media platforms.

To find out more about how we can help you with your marketing campaigns, including influencer marketing please get in contact with Alison at alison@acorntourism.co.uk