Travelers have begun to see an industry first of sorts on the social network Instagram. Clicking on a photo in a special gallery of Conrad Hotels property images will re-direct users to the hotel chain's reservations page, USA Today reports.
A user must click on Conrad Hotels' profile link on Instagram to find a second link, which, in turn, pulls up a gallery of bookable Instagram photos.
In other words, just clicking on a Conrad hotel photo that has been shared anywhere on Instagram won't re-direct to the hotel's reservation page on its own, at least not until the day when Instagram enables such functionality--and starts taking commissions.
It's not clear how many Instagram users will find that link on the Conrad Hotels profile page. It seems a bit buried in the Instagram user interface.
Yet if Conrad's experiment is effective, parent company Hilton Worldwide may extend the program to its other brands, says USA Today.
Third-party tool
The technical side of this experiment is run by Philadelphia-based marketer Curalate's Like2Buy solution.
Curalate says its analytics attribute referral revenue to individual images to prove return-on-investment for any brand's social effort.
Its technology also supports retargeting, so the hotel can later pitch messages at Instagram users it knows had been browsing its image feed.
Other travel companies have done social experiments. Dutch airline KLM, for instance, made it possible to book flights via Twitter and Facebook last year. The online travel agency startup Stayful began its TweetStay program last year, in which guests can book a room via Twitter.
But the rapid rise of Instagram to be one of the top three most used social networks, depending on how you measure such things, has given it a fresh interest for travel companies.
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