Could the latest tech turn social influencers into kings and queens of travel?

If you’re not of Generation X then you might be unaware that influencers already sell stuff directly through their posts, with no need to click away to a website to complete a purchase.  

This kind of selling is referred to by analysts as "social selling" - where social media meets e-commerce. To date that’s been dominated by fashion and beauty, in part because of the audience, but in part because these are commoditized items that are relatively easy to manage the sales and distribution flow.  

But with travel being right up there in the top handful of online sales verticals in terms of the total economic value, perhaps only behind the sale of financial products like pensions or mortgages and loans, there are a lot of people keen to crack social selling for travel products. 

In August, TikTok entered a strategic partnership with Klook to do just this through its Kreator influencer program. By integrating booking capabilities for experiences into the TikTok platform, they are enabling travelers, who already use the platform in abundance for travel inspiration, to now make end-to-end bookings in-app.  

If you’re thinking "but who wants to buy their holiday off a social media influencer" consider this: with 84% of adults in the United States saying they turn to travel influencers for trusted recommendations when booking trips, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched.  

Clearly selling travel is far more complex than selling make-up or shoes, not least because there are so many variables, limited stock and ever-changing prices. But online travel agencies cracked all that 20 years ago. We’re now seeing the first step in travel enabling content creators to do what they were born to do: sell, sell, sell. 

Experiences: the best fit for social commerce?  

While airlines and hotels have done a good job driving awareness and consumer engagement through social channels - they haven’t captured the commerce opportunity. Could that be because most of the inspirational content online is created and shared whilst in-destination?

When you combine this with the fact that more than 50% of experiences are booked while travelers are in destination, it seems clear that the first travel category to fly up the social commerce leaderboards would be the tours and attractions space.  

But there are a few other reasons experiences are the front-runner to capitalize on social commerce: 

• Price point: There’s natural apprehension for funneling high-value transactions through social commerce. Given the more accessible price-point for many tours and experiences, it’s more fitting with this type of purchase than flights or accommodation that tend to be of higher value.  
• Content-driven: The nature of experiences means that they lean incredibly well to short-form content where travelers engage with viral content or their favorite travel influencers, influencing their decisions on what to do.  
• Simpler booking flows: Though there can be some complexity for certain types of experiences (more on that later) many products require minimal personal information and can be purchased with a few clicks. Compare that to booking a plane ticket for example. 

What will it take to sell experiences through social platforms at a global scale?

Buying consumer goods on TikTok is easy. The seller creates a TikTok shop account, uses TikTok’s own or a third-party inventory management system, which also handles fulfilment and creates short-form video content to promote said product.  

Unfortunately, selling experiences won’t be this straightforward. There are still some challenges that will impact experiences retailing through social commerce. These could include:

• Dynamic Inventory Management: Fluctuating availability based on ticket type, time, date etc. makes it difficult to present only bookable products to potential consumers, particularly when social commerce platforms aren’t currently cognizant of a date range for contextual searches.
• Fragmentation with Booking Systems: Complex APIs, extensive adoption of a huge range of different booking systems, and custom solutions to handle nuances of different technologies - all part of the reason that online bookings for tours and experiences lag other verticals. Though the OTA’s may claim ubiquitous supply - a unified connectivity solution would be needed to scale experiences to all online operators in the same way that social commerce platforms have scaled physical goods.  
• Complex bookings: Though this isn’t the case for an Eiffel Tower ticket entry, much of the industry – for example, tours or outdoor activities – requires insurance, licensing, data protection and identification (the list goes on) to take part in these activities.  
• Customer service and support: An area of complexity that isn’t easy to solve, especially when aggregators, OTA’s or other intermediaries power bookings on behalf of smaller operators, who are often the people who can and do resolve consumer issues.  

Who will be the winners and losers here? 

Unlocking the true potential of experiences in this space will mean enabling millions of people to regularly post travel content to turn that content into money. As a result, it’s unlikely the long-term winner will be an established consumer brand that has its best interests in driving direct bookings.

In all likelihood, it will be an intermediary platform that simplifies supply-side inefficiencies, delivers a truly global solution, and removes all possible complexities from online bookings of the nature we outlined above. 

Think about how Shopify has empowered thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses to solve these complexities for their businesses, and you can see the outlines of what can happen in travel once a company can solve the sales and marketing infrastructure of the industry through the lens of what is best for consumers.

That is the type of solution that could drive online travel commerce at scale for the in-destination world. There’s around $300 billion a year in experiences sales at stake here, hopefully, that will focus a few minds to find a solution.