Social Media Engagement for Travel Brands

How to Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC) Introduction: User-generated content (UGC) helps brands connect authentically with audiences, as people trust peer recommendations over ads. Showcasing real user experiences builds credibility, strengthens community bonds, and turns customers into advocates, driving organic growth and engagement. Key Concepts -Social Proof: UGC demonstrates trust and recommendations, often more effective than ads. -Authenticity: Real customer content fosters trust as genuine endorsements. -Community Engagement: UGC encourages customer connection and sharing. -Content Variety: UGC provides diverse, reusable content for multiple channels. Challenges in Implementing UGC -Quality Control: Curating UGC for brand alignment can be challenging. -Permissions: Obtain creator permission to avoid legal issues. -Negative Feedback: Be prepared to manage unfavorable UGC without harming your reputation. -Incentivizing Participation: Encourage customers to share experiences through incentives. Strategies & Solutions To gather and utilize user-generated content (UGC), brands can create hashtag campaigns, run contests for product photos, and showcase testimonials on social media for credibility. Highlighting curated UGC demonstrates real product use, while repurposing it in emails and ads maximizes reach. Engaging with creators by tagging and sharing their posts strengthens connections and encourages more sharing. Benefits of Leveraging UGC User-generated content (UGC) enhances credibility and trust by showcasing authentic customer experiences, leading to higher conversion rates. It fosters brand engagement and loyalty while being cost-effective, filling content calendars without high expenses. UGC also improves SEO by generating relevant content that boosts discoverability through branded hashtags and reviews. Insights for Effective UGC Campaigns To maximize user-generated content (UGC), prioritize authenticity by encouraging customers to share genuine experiences instead of scripted or promotional ones. Monitor UGC performance by tracking metrics like engagement and conversions to understand what resonates with your audience. Additionally, create a streamlined content submission process with direct upload links or clear instructions to make it easy for users to share their content. Conclusion: User-generated content (UGC) builds social proof, fosters trust, and engages communities. By incorporating UGC into your marketing strategy, you transform customers into brand advocates, enhancing reach and connections. Utilizing hashtag campaigns, reviews, contests, and social media features encourages sharing experiences and cultivates a loyal community that spreads your brand's message organically. #UGCmarketing #brandUGC #contentstrategy #digitalmarketing #usergeneratedcontent #UGCstrategy #brandengagement #socialmediastrategy #contentcreation #UGCcommunity

easyGroup, creator and owner of the easy family of brands, Europe's most famous value brand just launched a new brand: easyInfluencer.travel - no it is not April 1st I have daily conversations with SMB travel businesses that tell me creator marketing doesn't work. The Easy Group thinks it works. They are building a whole brand around it to bring influencer marketing to their SMB hotel partners for a small monthly subscription. Congrats George Karavokyris on the launch. Welcome to the party. Klook thinks it works. They have a creator community 20,000 strong and run an annual "Kreatorverse" conference at their own significant expense to reward top performers. GetYourGuide thinks it works. They have one of the most sophisticated creator programs in travel. They get their suppliers to give them comped seats and then use the content created to beat those suppliers to the next booking by winning in social search. Accor thinks it works. They are currently running an in-house creator program in APAC to build an always-on machine so they show up for their keywords in social. Lee Besser who is helping to run that program will join me on stage at Arival next week in Brisbane. Our Videreo clients like Max Tours in Las Vegas know it works. They get 80% of their bookings direct, almost all from social media. What these companies understand is that right now, the most cost-effective pathway to new customers is by dominating the social search results, the place where most people are now doing their searching. For the OTA's in particular, every dollar not spent on the most expensive pathway to customers, Google or Meta ads, is what drives their margins, their valuations and their bonuses. And the past couple of years have been a golden age for those doing the work in the social search space. To be super clear: the most effective way to show up for your keywords in the largest search spaces in travel (Instagram and TikTok) is via creator content. https://lnkd.in/giecmpDV

Your customers scroll past 500 posts a day. Boring corporate content isn't getting their attention. Human content is. People are being spammed to death. Cold emails, Cold calls, LinkedIn pitches from strangers. It's harder than ever to reach people. But content consumption is as high as ever. So give your customers what they actually want: Useful, interesting, fun content that brings your brand to life. B2C brands figured this out years ago. Duolingo's unhinged TikToks. Ryanair roasting customers. None of it looks perfect. All of it works. B2B companies are still stuck in 2019. Snoozefest product updates, unactionable whitepapers and webinars. Here's what to do instead: 1. Employee-Generated Content (EGC) Exec perspectives, your team filming day in the life videos, product demos on their phones. People trust employees/execs over impersonal content every time. How to implement: • Get your execs posting consistently (work with someone like me to help) • Recognise employees who post in all-hands meetings • Monthly incentives for team members getting the most reach Example: Zapier, beehiiv, ClickUp 2. Creator-Generated Content (CGC) Creators making branded content that doesn't feel like ads. Tutorials, breakdowns, recommendations that fit naturally into their feed. How to implement: • Partner with educators already talking about your space - they have more influence than entertainers • Let them create content that looks like their existing content Example: Zapier, Gamma 3. User-Generated Content (UGC) Real customers sharing real pain points and results. Think before-and-afters and "Here's how I actually use this" videos. This converts because it's proof, not corporate promises. How to implement: • Feature customer posts on your company page • Build program tiers that reward UGC with early access or perks • Make them look good when they share your content You don't need the biggest ad budget to win here. The ones who are winning are building content systems - around their team, creators and customers. 📌 Want help implementing this? Send me a DM ♻️ Repost to help your network win at marketing in 2026. ➕ Follow me (Will McTighe) for more like this.

China is teaching Western brands the secret to travel content: show your audience, don’t tell them. In China, they’re booking trips directly from the videos they watch. When people are planning their next venture, they don’t open a search engine. They open Little Red Book, Xiaohongshu. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a social platform that’s a cross between Instagram, Pinterest, and Amazon, and is one of the most influential apps in China when it comes to consumer travel behavior. Audiences scroll, save and imagine themselves in the places they’re discovering. It’s a completely emotional, visual and experience-led journey. Brands are building their content like creators, not institutions. And it’s why platforms like Xiaohongshu are reshaping how the next generation of travellers make decisions, long before they ever look at a booking site. Meanwhile, in the West, a lot of brands are still publishing like it's 2013, focusing on static ads, stock content and campaigns built around conversions, not culture. They’re leading with messaging, rarely focusing on experience and using platforms to sell when really they should be using them to give audiences an insight into the world they experience when they travel. But what I’ve learned is that travel content isn’t about volume anymore. It’s about resonance. Travellers, and especially younger travellers, are looking for identity and relatability. They want to feel seen and want content that isn’t an ad. And that’s what China’s travel content is getting right. It shows rather than tells. Western travel brands need to stop seeing TikTok and Reels as purely distribution channels and treat them as inspiration-booking engines instead. That’s how the next generation is planning to travel and it’s the only long-term way you’re going to get them to book with you.

Expedia just dropped new research on what actually drives travel decisions in the AI era, and if you work in hospitality, you should be paying attention. Because this confirms what many of us have been seeing on the ground. 1. Video is not optional. Travelers are nearly 3X more influenced by video than static images, and 71% said video content shaped their decisions. That is not engagement fluff. That is revenue impact. If your property is still leading with static room shots and templated captions, you are invisible. 2. Authenticity wins. Authentic, user generated content consistently outperformed fully AI generated material. Less than half of respondents said they were comfortable with fully AI created articles or influencer content. Translation, travelers are open to AI assisting behind the scenes, but they do not want to feel like they are being marketed to by a robot. 3. Representation drives trust. 34% of respondents said seeing themselves represented in content increased trust in a brand. Diversity is not a PR talking point. It directly impacts booking confidence. If your marketing only reflects one type of guest, you are quietly telling everyone else they do not belong. 4. Structure matters. The research showed that clear storytelling with a strong beginning, engaging middle, and clear call to action increases comprehension and recall. Video scenes lasting 2 to 9 seconds hit the sweet spot. Overly fast cuts reduce engagement. Sloppy pacing loses attention. This is not about being flashy. It is about being intentional. 5. Social is critical for younger travelers. 71% of travelers under 40 said they use social media for inspiration. If your social strategy is disconnected from your broader commercial strategy, you are leaking demand. Period. And here is a stat that should make every GM rethink how they position pre arrival marketing. 85% of respondents said they go on a pre trip shopping spree. That means travelers are in a buying mindset before they even arrive. Smart brands show up during planning, not just at check in. The biggest theme running through all of this is simple. AI can enhance efficiency. It can optimize targeting. It can accelerate production. But it does not replace emotional intelligence, point of view, and human storytelling. I live in hotels full time. I can tell within 5 minutes whether a property’s marketing feels human or manufactured. The ones that feel real, that show real guests, real staff, real perspective, always stand out. In a world drowning in AI generated content, the competitive advantage is not more automation. It is stronger humanity. https://lnkd.in/eM8dDtZG --- If you like the way I look at the world of hospitality, let’s chat: scott@mrscotteddy.com

Ever wondered if we could consumer perceptions, attitudes, and intentions without running endless surveys? In our latest article, published in Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Raoul Kübler, Susanne Adler, Lina Welke, Prof. dr. Koen Pauwels, and I discuss how user-generated content (UGC) - things like reviews, posts, search logs, and even podcasts - can help approximate key consumer mindset metrics (like awareness, consideration, satisfaction, or recommendation). We propose a four-step process, which comes with concrete recommendations for various tools to put each step into action: 1️⃣ Identify what aspect of the mindset you want to capture 2️⃣ Find the right UGC source 3️⃣ Extract the information with the right tools 4️⃣ Validate that the results actually predict relevant outcomes It’s not about replacing surveys entirely, but more about combining the “old” and “new” to get faster, richer insights into consumer perceptions, attitudes, and intentions. Check out the full article (open access) here: https://lnkd.in/da-BK3qR LMU Munich School of Management Institut für Marketing - LMU München

The fastest way to make a destination boring is to let the logo do the talking. Every tourism board has a website with beautiful drone footage and a tagline about "where history meets modernity, blah blah blah." Every hotel has a grid of perfect king rooms. Every restaurant has a press photo of the chef with his arms crossed. None of it makes anyone want to book a flight. What makes people book a flight is a person. The tourism marketing manager who has been in her role for eleven years and can tell you which bakery has been in the same family for six generations. The captain who has run charters on the same lake since he was nineteen. The historian at the small-town museum who will talk to you for two hours about why the bridge was built where it was built. The woman who started a walking tour because she couldn't stand that the city she loved had forgotten to tell its own stories. Those are the people readers actually connect with. The people are the draw, their stories are what you remember far after the trip. I think a lot of destination marketing forgets this because the institutional layer (the boards, the committees, the approval processes) is designed to sand down the specific and the human in favor of the safe and the broad. The result is content that could be about anywhere, which means it's about nowhere. Strong travel content allows the real person to be visible. It values authentic guides over a canned, sanitized spokesperson. This often decides if the reader trusts what's being said. Readers are tired of logos. They want to meet somebody.

I hear it all 🙌 the 🙌 time... "Creators didn't work for us." That's because your polished brand voice may be less believable than a creator’s imperfect iPhone video. And that stings a little, doesn’t it? Because hotels, destinations, and vacation rental brands spend a lot of time making things look perfect. Perfect lighting. Perfect caption. Perfect brand-approved language that sounds like it survived seven rounds of revisions and lost its pulse somewhere around round three. But travelers are not only looking for perfect anymore. They are looking for proof. They want to see what it actually feels like to arrive, walk in, look around, make coffee, find dinner, sit on the deck, take the kids to the lake, or realize the place they booked was exactly what they hoped it would be. That is where creators can change the game. But only if you build the system before you start handing out free stays and hoping growth just happens. Here’s where I’d start: 1️⃣Know what booking problem you are solving. Do you need more midweek stays? More family bookings? More shoulder season demand? More trust around a higher nightly rate? A creator campaign without a booking goal is just content confetti. 2️⃣Pick creators for audience fit, not follower count. The question is not “How many people follow them?” It’s “Would their audience actually book this stay?” A smaller creator with the right trust can outperform a massive account with the wrong crowd. Give them the experience, not just the property. Show them the coffee shop, the trail, the lake access, the sunset spot, the local breakfast, the weird little roadside stop people remember. The stay matters. The trip sells it. 3️⃣Build a clear shot list, then leave room for humanity. You need assets you can use. But you also need the unscripted moments that make people believe it. Over-directing a creator is how you turn trust into an ad. 4️⃣Track what happens after the content goes live. Save the videos. Repurpose them. Watch comments. Note questions. Use the language travelers repeat back to you. That is your next round of marketing research, delivered in public. Creators do work. But not as a last-minute visibility hack. They work when you treat them like part of your demand strategy. The goal is not just more content. The goal is helping travelers feel confident enough to book.

Thirteen years. 🤔 That's how long it took Sally Bunnell and her team at NaviSavi Travel to become an "overnight success." From the grit of startup life—pivoting from a TV show concept in 2013 to today’s innovative, user-generated video platform—NaviSavi has redefined how travelers and businesses connect through authentic, unedited short videos. Why? Because in a world where polished marketing doesn’t always translate to trust, Sally saw the power of genuine, peer-to-peer content. The numbers back it up: user-generated video gets 4x more click-throughs than slick, studio-made content. And it’s not just about clicks. The platform embeds booking links directly into every video. Travelers don’t just watch—they plan, book, and go, all in one seamless experience. This approach is shifting the paradigm from “viral views” to measurable ROI. Results? Partners report up to a 30% increase in sales. And with 125,000 clips covering 180 countries already uploaded, NaviSavi is proving that real stories create real business impact. Sally’s vision: build a platform that empowers users to monetize their travel experiences and provide businesses with instant, high-quality, rights-cleared content—no more waiting weeks for stock footage. Authenticity, speed, and a one-stop solution. That’s the future Sally built—and it’s changing the game.

There’s no marketing tool more authentic, powerful and cost-effective than the voices of the people who live, work and love your destination. DMOs spend a lot of time crafting brand messages, but in reality, the best stories don’t come from us—they come from our residents. When residents share their experiences, it’s more credible than any ad we could run. Visitors trust real people more than they trust brands. A local artist talking about how your destination inspires their work or a restaurant owner sharing their family’s generational recipes—that’s the kind of storytelling that builds deep, emotional connections with travelers. How to Activate Residents as Storytellers 📸 Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC) – Encourage locals to tag your destination in their posts and showcase their unique perspectives. 🎙️ Start a Podcast or Blog Series – Feature local voices, businesses and community leaders to highlight what makes your destination special. 🎥 Create Resident Video Spotlights – Short, authentic videos of locals sharing their favorite places, hidden gems and experiences go further than generic ads. 🏡 Host “Be a Tourist in Your Own Town” Initiatives – Give residents reasons to engage with their own destination and become natural ambassadors. When you empower residents to tell their stories, you create a destination identity that feels real. The result? More trust and credibility from potential visitors, stronger community buy-in for tourism and content that resonates and spreads organically. Tourism isn’t just about attracting visitors—it’s about building a sense of place that locals are proud to share. If we make them part of the story, they’ll help us tell it in ways we never could. How are you engaging residents in your destination’s storytelling? Let’s swap ideas in the comments!👇 #DestinationMarketing #Storytelling #DMO #Tourism #Marketing #Travel