Last week, a Dublin-based hotel banned bloggers and other influencers after a 22-year-old influencer broke down in tears when she was refused free accommodation.

UK-based social-media influencer Elle Darby emailed Charleville Lodge in Dublin to seek a free five-night accommodation in exchange for bringing attention to the boutique hotel. The hotel not just posted the email, but also provided a scathing response, ultimately refusing the proposal. This created quite a controversy, and both the influencer and the hotel received a lot of hate, which ultimately led the hotel to post a follow-up, banning all bloggers from their business.

The process of work in cases like these used to be very simple: the brand sent a free item to a blogger, and the blogger posted about it on their social media platform or blog. Depending on how influential they are, the business would earn new followers and in some cases, potential sales. This, however, was the mode of business many years ago.

Initially, there were two to three top bloggers in the country. Many aspiring bloggers followed suit and the numbers soon rose exponentially. Then came along the wave of content sharing apps like Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, making competition stiffer and reducing the odds of getting noticed among the thousands of ‘influencers’ in the crowded space. What is then, an aspiring influencer supposed to do now?

Image source: Medium

For brands wanting to raise awareness about a particular product or feature, bloggers and social media influencers have undoubtedly become a more sought-after and affordable alternative than celebrities, for instance. For the bigger brands, it is quite easy to send free products as gifts and write them off as marketing expense. For many others, like in the case of Charleville Lodge, who already have ‘186k followers on two Facebook pages, an estimated 80k on Snapchat, 32k on Instagram and 12k on Twitter’, and a host of viral campaigns to their credit, it doesn’t even make much sense for them to get an influencer on board for promotions.

However, for today’s young brands and boutique startups, the same cannot be said. As soon as they launch, random bloggers start emailing them, asking for sponsorships and free items, offering to pay back with likes and shares on social media. What many influencers don’t understand is that likes won’t pay the tremendous costs that startups have to incur on positioning themselves in the already-crowded travel market. There is no doubt that the right influencer will give them followers, but most of the times, likes don’t necessarily result in sales, which is a prerequisite for any brand starting out and trying to sustain itself.

So, does that make it completely wrong for influencers to approach brands proactively for freebies? The answer is no. Just like brands, influencers are free to market themselves in any way they please or deem fit. When it comes to barter, influencers shouldn’t stop trying, although they must understand that it is not the only way to market themselves and that brands are not obligated to return the favour.

There are many brands out there who would be more than willing to sponsor posts, so it would be wise to do a thorough research and get back to the brand with a favourable pitch that would ensure both parties mutually benefit from the collaboration, both on social media and financially. Influencer marketing definitely presents one of the most rewarding opportunities for brands to leverage the power of word-of-mouth at scale, but as the old adage goes – money doesn’t grow on trees.

The post How okay is it for travel influencers to ask for freebies? appeared first on TravHQ.

There is not a single industry that has remained unaffected by the dawn of social media, and the travel and tourism industry is no different. Before social media came into the picture, peer reviews and photos of your dream destination weren’t as easy to access. Today, the ease of accessibility to destination information has put the spotlight on why the industry must leverage new media tools to benefit themselves.

During the recently concluded Beijing International Travel Mart (BITM) 2017, Daksh Sharma, Founding Partner at TravHQ, conducted a workshop on ‘Going Global Instantly – Leveraging New Media Tools’ and how the travel industry can adapt to the rapidly changing needs of its audience.

Here are some key highlights from the session:

Pictures speak a thousand words
Social media is the best way to show off any destination, and also boost engagement on your profile at the same time.When choosing a destination, visitors want to take a visual tour of their potential destination; images give guests the liberty to interpret the destination, and social media gives them the opportunity to share their travel itinerary visually. Social media platforms like Instagram, allow people to do exactly that and with travel brands promoting their destinations through peppy contests, the trend helps them engage their followers by encouraging them to share their opinions. Hence, many hotel and homestay owners are tapping into the pool of travellers via Instagram. Take a cue from Eco Habitat in Coorg:

Video testimonials are like 22 carat gold

Video content is booming in China, with 41.5% of the country forecast to be digital video watchers. The most popular apps include Miaopai, Toutiao Video, Kuaishou and Meipai, and even the posts from the most popular destination marketing organizations have visually pleasing, photo-rich content, alongside practical travel information. From boutique hotels to homestays in far-flung areas of the world, everyone is jumping on the video bandwagon.

For instance, the Mount Lavinia Hotel in Sri Lanka made a promotional video for its hotel in the Mandarin language to be able to attract Chinese audience through its video content. Watch the video here:

The Travel Influencer connect

Close to a quarter of Chinese travellers are independent travellers, aged between 20 and 25. This Millennial group looks for inspiration for their next travel by visiting their favourite bloggers, Instagrammers and YouTubers, rather than relying on traditional advertising mediums such as TV, newspapers and banners. This is where travel influencers step in. With followers running into hundreds of thousands (and even millions sometimes), they enable travel brands to reach audiences worldwide. With their unique storytelling through visual content and first-hand experiences of travelling, they are able to influence people in a way like no other. Today, a brand recommendation from an influencer carries more weight than any other endorsement, and many travel properties are vying for the attention of top influencers to boost their destinations’ allure.

Responsibility towards responses

According to travel site TripAdvisor, as much as 93 percent of executives consider the improvement and management of their online reviews as the most important factor to the future of their business. By taking out time to listen to, and respond to guest feedback, travel brands can strengthen their reputation, improve social media performance, and even boost financial outcomes. On the other hand, failure to respond to reviews, especially the negative ones, can cost companies dearly, in the form of lower review scores and overall ratings.

Top DIY tools for social media marketing

While the Internet is awash with new social media management tools, the right ones can definitely make social media content easy to create, curate, manage, schedule and finally, analyze the effectiveness of campaigns. From the most popular image editing app Snapseed, to Canva, the free, graphic-design tool website that lets you create beautiful social media content, and video editor app Quik, these new media tools are beneficial to brands in more ways than one.

Image source: Android Community

The post Highlights from workshop on leveraging new media tools – BITM 2017 appeared first on TravHQ.

In its campaign to woo social influencers and become a single social media platform for everything, Facebook recently launched its new app Facebook Creator to create and promote videos on the platform.

This stand-alone app logs into Facebook and offers a dashboard showing engagement stats and even follower activity. With a variety of editing tools, wacky face filters and effects, it might just be one of the quickest way to go live with anything you’re interested in broadcasting from your Facebook account, complete with metrics and a message inbox.

This app could usher in a new era of travel influencing. Today, it’s hard to find a single social media stream that’s not filled with enticing pictures and videos about travel destinations, and often, it’s the popular individuals we follow on Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook, who are behind the production of the content.

With the advent of the Creator app, bloggers and social media celebrities will now have a single platform to capture their target audience, instead of streaming videos on one and showing pictures on the other. According to statistics by Facebook, as of September 2017, close to 1.5 billion people on average log onto the platform daily and are considered daily active users. This gives the tourism boards a mammoth audience base to promote their destinations and services.

The app’s enhanced communication features are also expected to attract more influencers, with its incorporated inbox for all messages and comments posted on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram. Having a unified inbox also means that the user doesn’t have to move through different apps just to reply.

Image source: The Verge

As more travel influencers move to the Creator platform, travel companies and tourism boards around the world can tap into their influence to promote exotic destinations or unique finds. The platform will also lend a certain authenticity to the find, thus luring potential travellers to book flights and getaways based on an influencers’ recommendations.

Moreover, the app ensures that data and analytics about the video is always made accessible to users, allowing them to regularly check any algorithm changes to their output. Knowing these key details about their follower demographics can help influencers focus on the type of video content they should post and reach out to travel brands who might be willing to promote their destinations in a particular way.

Travel Influencers are the new brand ambassadors. So, when a tourism board or a travel company works with them, it is not only the product or service that the Creator app will help promote, but it will also put the spotlight firmly on the destination, via breathtaking footage and fantastic visual content.

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