The influencer landscape is constantly changing and adjusting, and we tend to see having a wider group of engaged and activated influencers tends to perform better.
Quote from Kirk Crenshaw, CMO of Traackr, in an article on PhocusWire this week:
The state of influencer marketing for travel brands.
The concept of "influencers" in the travel industry is often a tricky one to understand and quantify.
This is both from the perspective of definition and results.
In many respects, an individual who simply has an amazing time on a trip and then posts updates about it on Facebook is, in reality, someone who can influence the travel purchases of others.
"Friends" will see the content and, perhaps, in months or even years to come will remember the time they saw pictures of a fantastic beach or awe-inspiring landmark or food in a restaurant at a destination.
Influential, yes - but not a jaw-dropping scale that gets travel brands particularly excited.
It's the world of professional influencers where nuances and questions still remain yet are often (perhaps rightly) forgotten in the rush by brands to be seen as being connected and engaged with starlets of social media.
On a number of occasions, many have noted how it was the rise of Instagram that gave travel blogging a new lease of life... coinciding with the emergence of the "influencers" label.
No longer did travelers who want to earn their crust on the road have to write anything - they could simply take beautiful (often heavily-filtered) pictures.
This rather simplistic analysis, however, does many a bit of a disservice - as the above story illustrates, they can drive a lot of interest in the direction of a brand.
There is genuine value to identifying who are the important people in this little ecosystem and figuring out how to engage with them.
Where this discipline faces larger scrutiny is in its longevity. Crenshaw notes that trends and strategies (and, presumably, results) change regularly, meaning it can be difficult for brands to be constantly evaluating how to play the game.
Brands (and especially their respective marketing directors) want to see a number of elements: results, data, consistency and brand values.
Thus the reason why Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, for example, spend around $11 billion a year on Google and not on influencers.