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Influencer marketing has become a key tool for the hospitality industry to reach its target market. Historically, we have relied on TV ads, magazines, travel books and travel agencies for inspiration in deciding where to go and where to stay. To this day, social media platforms offer vast amounts of content that serve as targeted and personalized recommendation tools.
This has also caught the attention of the hospitality industry, with major hotel brands such as Marriott and Moxy Hotels launching successful social media influencer campaigns as part of their marketing strategy. Hospitality brands find that they can achieve a much higher return on investment by working with social media influencers instead of engaging A-list celebrity brand ambassadors. In fact, one study found that 70% of teens trust influencers more than traditional celebrities, and 49% of consumers rely on influencer endorsements.
Changes in content consumption are forcing hospitality brands to rethink how they market. Whereas reach and volume used to be the primary goals for brands, the industry is learning that social media marketing can be used to be more targeted and prioritize engagement over reach. Brands will now have access to richer data about their target market, which they can use to carefully select the most relevant influencers to work with.
how does that work?
Influencers are typically bloggers and creators who post regularly on social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. They tend to have niches that draw their audience in first, such as coffee, cooking, video games, travel, and most other categories of interest. In many cases, the content posted is only tangentially related to that interest and is otherwise an edited snapshot of the influencer’s daily life. As a result, influencers build a strong connection and trust between themselves and their followers. It is this close, targeted audience built by influencers that makes them such a valuable marketing tool.
In the hospitality industry, it’s common for brands to offer free trips, free hotel stays, and free excursions to influencers and expect them to feature their trips and experiences on their channels. That’s it.
What should brands know?
Influencers are obligated to disclose the nature of their relationship with brands. For example, in the UK, if an influencer has been paid in some way by a brand, the influencer must explain it to the audience. . Additionally, if the influencer receives payments and the brand has some degree of control over the influencer’s content (e.g. if the brand has approval rights or to say certain things to the influencer about the brand’s products and services). request), the influencer must also: Explicitly label your content in a conspicuous manner with “ads” or similar identifiers. Otherwise, both brands and influencers may be scrutinized by the Advertising Standards Authority.
Given the editorial and down-to-earth nature of vlogs and Instagram posts, it’s very easy for followers to be unaware that the influencers they follow are making some kind of commercial gain from the brands they feature in their posts. . For this reason, advertising regulators around the world are stepping up their efforts to ensure that both influencers and brands do not mislead consumers.
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