Globalization and social media allowed travel to become an everyday job for many people. Travel influencers emerged and boosted the tourism industry numbers creating new ways to promote tourism businesses and creating meaningful content for millions to follow.
Travel influencers are very important for the boost in the travel industry.
But why?
They usually engage millions of people. This is very important for every industry, and the travel industry is no different. While in the fashion industry, for example, influencers share tips or photos about the products they are using, in the tourism industry, influencer marketing works differently. It is more important to share a real experience than a scripted campaign. And this is where Travel influencers help companies from the tourism industry. A hotel can approach an influencer and offer him a stay in exchange for visibility in the influencer’s platform.
The pandemic grounded people to stay home, blocking all types of travelling due to the closing of borders between countries.This had a tremendous impact on tourism companies and whole countries that depend deeply on their tourists.
Since 2010, the share of CDG of travel and tourism has grown every year, according to studies.The travel bans and the emergency measures implemented to face the health crisis caused a major fall in global leisure travel in 2020. It decreased by 49.4% in 2020 over 2019, reaching 2.37 trillion U.S. dollars. In 2019 de global leisure travel spend was roughly 4.69 trillion U.S. dollars.This affected whole countries and communities that relied deeply on tourism, with many hotels, stays, restaurants and parks closing doors.
With the development of the vaccine, the hope for better days for the tourism industry (and global health industry) rose. In Europe, the first signs of improvement came in the summer of 2020, 4 months after the first wave of Covid. In that period, the majority of countries faced under 100 new cases of the virus, allowing travelling.
This helped some countries that were deeply affected by the pandemic to gain some hope on better days, like Italy, Portugal and Spain, three countries that are very strong on tourism. With the following increase of cases between October and December, some countries decided to close their borders again. The called “third wave” of cases came between February and May, with several countries turning back on opening doors and returning to quarantine and emergency measures.
The importance of travel influencers on the tourism industry
Many influencers also felt the pandemic punches when they were faced with the obligation to stay home.
YouTubers like David Dobrik, whose content revolved around parties and big events with thousands of people, stopped making videos for more than 6 months. Others had to adapt to other types of content, like streaming or gaming, in order to continue producing content.
But one type of content creator suffered more than the others: travel influencers.
Travel influencers are paid to travel all over the world, visit exotic places and check out hotels or stays. They are very valuable for the owners of tourism-related businesses because their opinions and posts can drive the blogger’s audience to visit the places that the travel influencers promoted. With the pandemic measures on, many of these travel influencers were obligated to stay home, or, at least, to change their normal travelling routines.
The so-called “inside tourism” was one of the key changes for the travel influencers. Instead of visiting exotic and far-away countries, these influencers began to travel within their own countries, partnering with local tourism businesses. This partnership was great for two reasons:
- On one hand, travel influencers continued to produce content, not stopping their normal work life.
- On the other hand, local tourism businesses that usually wouldn’t gain much attention were faced with marketing opportunities for a lower cost. This drove many businesses to grow in a post-pandemic situation and to establish in the tourism market.
Now that many countries are in an advanced stage of vaccination, the travel industry began to work in almost normal terms. Countries like the US are already receiving visitors, as their borders reopened.
In Europe, although many countries are going back and forth with the closing of borders, tourism is already moving. Greece is an example of this, with many of the islands already with full vaccination in order to receive guests during summer. The UK is also planning on lifting all restrictions in mid of July, boosting their tourism by the end of July and during August.
Travel influencers will have an important role in this. Hotels, restaurants, stays and other tourism-related businesses will have a need to certify possible customers that they are following all the precautionary measures. This is where the travel influencers will come in, showing that it is safe to travel and that life is coming back to normal.
Bold Creators Club can connect you with the best Brazilian travel influencers
We know how important it is to choose the right influencers for your marketing campaign. That is why is easier if you contact an agency.
We will make a deep search on the Brazilian travel influencers world and present you with the best hypothesis.
We can also help you develop the campaign, as our marketing specialists know and understand the tourism industry.
Talk to us and let’s schedule a meeting for you to understand more about influencer marketing.