eBookers looks to redefine the travel brochure for the age of social media

British holidaymakers have a new way to discover travel options via a new social travel brochure facilitated by eBookers.

The idea is to take all of those vacation photos posted on social media and turn them into a verified and vetted social travel brochure. Travelers are asked to upload photos from social platforms such as Instagram — including a travel tip related to the photo — to share with the community.

Those chosen as featured will win some extra BONUS+ cash rewards, which is the company's loyalty program. Many of the images are re-blogged on the company's own Instagram account, and do make for a fun and engaging way to explore random nooks and crannies of the world.

As part of this new travel inspiration and social brochure promotion, eBookers polled 2,000 users to find out how social media influences vacation behaviors, and found:

50% said that a friend's social sharing are most likely to influence decisions on the next destination.
30% took tips from friends, family and colleagues when choosing their next vacations.
20% said that travel agents were the source of the most influence.
10% said that media influenced them the most, with the remainder looking to celebrity hotspots (5%) and famous films (4%) for inspiration.

As far as traditional printed travel brochures, one third of respondents said they hadn't picked one up in at least 10 years!

Trip envy is a big deal for many, with 59% feeling "envious and jealous" when consuming vacation photos of others on social media. The envy seems to work well, as 22% of these respondents would book a trip purely because many friends have shared pictures of that destination on social media.

And this is further fueled by those who strive to cause pure unbridled jealousy in their social networks: 36% share only holiday photos that they think social media followers will engage with, while 10% admitted to crafting a vacation identity by only sharing trendy hotspots on social media.

The campaign is closely tied to its Where Next Finder, which is gathered under #WhereNext on social media. The Finder focuses purely on travel inspiration through an integration with TripTuner which provides a slider mechanism for finding trips most relevant to the user.