Influencer Marketing: Understanding Customers in Tourism & Travel

This essay delves into the realm of influencer marketing, particularly within the tourism and travel sector, highlighting how social media influencers shape customer perceptions and decisions. It examines the role of travel bloggers and social media personalities in promoting destinations, hotels, and services, emphasizing their impact on attracting customers, especially younger demographics. The essay features case studies of influencers like Simon Alan Reeve and Monica Stott, analyzing their strategies and effectiveness in engaging followers and driving traffic to specific destinations. It also discusses the future of influencer marketing, considering the integration of technologies like virtual reality, drones, and artificial intelligence to enhance the influencer's reach and impact. The study concludes that in the age of digitization, travel and tourism are rapidly evolving industries, and social media influencers play a vital role in shaping customer understanding and promoting various travel experiences.

Understanding
customers

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
References:.......................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
The influence marketing is also known as social media marketing where companies and
large brands influence organisation for promoting their products and services which is ask by
social media influencer that has large number of followers. The most of customers in the present
21st century are getting influenced by social media which helps the business organisation in
enhancing sales and profitability as to attract more customers (Jain, Kaul, and Sanyal, 2021). In
framework of tourism and travel industry, hotels and restaurants require food blogger or
travellers which have large number of followers in huge number as to promote their hotels &
restaurants. For doing this they get payments along with free membership of few hotels in
accordance to deal of influencer & hotels. The essay will cover introduction on area of influencer
marketing, different influencers and their analysis on product selection and brands along with
future of influencers.
MAIN BODY
The tourism sector involves the business which have accommodation services, food
services, travel agencies and few others. In the tourism sector the main customer which are
consider those clients that loves to travel at different locations for the business purposes or
leisure. The most effective tool recognised is social media marketing for attracting customer’s
attention towards the specific destination or hotel. The organisation discovers travelling bloggers
in context to tourism sector who can blog for their destination so that to huge number of
followers it can be recommended to take visit of destination or specific hotel for having effective
customer satisfaction. This kind of marketing helps basically in attracting young customers
regarding restaurants and hotels. In this social media influencer gets the invitation from
organisation of tourism industry and visited by them for blogging at particular destination.
Pictures, video are share by them along with their good experience is highlighted regarding the
particular destination which they recommend their followers to visit destination (Meena, and
Vishal Reddy, 2020). The social media influencer sometimes asks their followers to visit on site
to meet with them for having better experience. It also helps in engaging lot of customers to visit
site and use of their products & services. Therefore, in such way company’s productivity and
sales in this sector get enhanced. The hotel and restaurant get advantage of attracting new
customers which leads to increase of their productivity. With this influencer get advantage of
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earning payment and discounts for their work as well as other benefits from same hotel or resorts
for which they promote the services.
Simon Alan Reeve is a British journalist, author, explorer, TV host, and maker of
documentaries. He was born in London, England, on July 21, 1972. He is well known for
producing environmental and international travel documentaries. His videos and social media
posts on the location have an impact on others. He decided to advertise several wilderness areas.
He published numerous books on topics like contemporary history, global tourism, and his travel
and adventure experiences. He didn't just advertise the place; he is also well-known for
describing the locals' way of life, manner of life, and the kinds of things they do to support their
fundamental necessities. Simon has many influencers who follow him, so the natural
environment is his primary area of choice for the tourism industry. On Instagram, he has 159.9K
followers. In his last 20 Instagram posts, he had an average of 5.6 K likes (Simon Reeve, 2022).
His influencers are drawn to his abilities and the information that he shares about the locations.
Additionally, he has been chosen to serve as the brand ambassador for the Kuoni Organization, a
global travel company (Television presenter and author Simon Reeve becomes Brand
Ambassador for Kuoni, 2022). In order to attract adventurers' attention to the business, Simon
here advocates for sustainability in this sector and for adventurous travel. Simon's primary
responsibilities at Kuoni Company include hosting client events; writing captivating, exclusive
articles for the business; and creating blogs for visitors to the company's website. Because he is
aware of the characteristics that will draw certain customers to a given destination, he shares all
of those factors in a way that will draw in readers (Sarkar, Sarkar, and Balaji, 2020). As a result,
his company's blogs are of a high calibre and appealing to travellers. He is therefore a productive
influencer for the travel and tourism sector.
One of the most well-known travel bloggers, Monica Stott, was born on October 8, 1987,
in England, the United Kingdom. She and her crew tour the globe, analyse the services offered
by hotels and restaurants at lower prices, and publish their experiences on her well-known blog,
"The Travel Hack." As a result, she advises her followers on the hotels and services available at
various price points, particularly for people with middle-class incomes. She also gave
recommendations for family-friendly vacation spots. In 2009, she launched her blog and
documented her first blogging trip around Australia and Asia (Monica, 2022). She received
favourable feedback for her initial blog and keeps blogging for her readers. The majority of
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hotels and restaurants ask her to write on their behalf as a main guest and pay her a fee based on
the value and calibre of her writing. Her initial preference is to explore the UK, which is where
she is from. Second, she shares a handful of the most crucial travel and tourism industry insider
secrets for finding the greatest trips on a small budget. When asked how she got the idea for
travel blogging, she said that she was expected to use the internet to learn about her classes when
she was 16, but that she also spent a lot of time looking at travel-related videos and photographs,
as well as the stories and experiences of other travellers (Spieth, Roeth, and Meissner, 2019). She
began perusing various travel websites, where she made the decision to explore a career in this
field as an influencer and adventure blogger (Travel Blogger Interview with Monica Stott of The
Travel Hack, 2022). The Internet plays a significant role in her job development and aids in her
influencer status.
The utilisation of various instruments and machines to carry out various jobs is
encouraged by digitization, which promises well for the future of travel influencers. Nowadays,
users use online services for practically all of their daily activities, including information
searches and hotel reservations. One of the best examples of such technology that aids
influencers in persuading their followers to follow them is virtual reality. Influencers can use
virtual reality to give their followers the impression that they are physically present at the
location, influencing their decision on where to spend their weekends (Tronvoll, and Edvardsson,
2019). Following the COVID outbreak, clients in the travel and tourist sector are primarily
concerned with adhering to all regulatory requirements and using goods and services that
emphasise sanitation. Influencers should thus post images and videos on social media that
promote the cleanliness of hotels and other tourist locations in order to draw in more tourists. A
study (Travel Influencers: The Future? 2022) found that 78% of travellers are influenced by
Instagram posts. Instagram, on the other hand, is constantly adding new features as a result of
observing its users and their needs. In order to capture their journey from various angles and
increase the appeal and influence of their blog, drones are one of the most important tools for
travellers and travel influencers. In this sector, artificial intelligence is expanding quickly.
Therefore, in the future, travel bloggers will be able to create blogs and vlogs for their audience
using robots (Zhou, and et.al., 2020).
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CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from the above essay that in context of digitalisation travel & tourism
industry is a fastest growing industry in which social media platforms are used by travellers for
collecting information regarding destination and hotels. Social media influencers are those
individuals who influence their followers towards the services or products. The influencer has
large number of followers on social media platforms which is its main feature. By their
follower’s blogs and vlogs are shared along with personal experience with the destination. The
influencer can be the part of travelling company such as Simon Alan Reeve which is consider
one of the most popular travellers in brand ambassador of Kuoni company which is worldwide
travelling company. In context of future of these influencers, they can use drones or artificial
intelligence for their blogs.
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References:
Books and Journals
Jain, Kaul, and Sanyal, 2021. What drives customers towards mobile shopping? An integrative
technology continuance theory perspective. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and
Logistics.
Meena, and Vishal Reddy, 2020. Understanding the impact of humour on the purchase decision
of customers.
Sarkar, Sarkar, and Balaji, 2020. The “Right-to-refuse-service” paradox: Other customers’
perception of discretionary service denial. Journal of Business Research, 121, pp.686-
695.
Spieth, Roeth, and Meissner, 2019. Reinventing a business model in industrial networks:
Implications for customers' brand perceptions. Industrial marketing management, 83,
pp.275-287.
Tronvoll, and Edvardsson, 2019. Exploring customers’ experiences of service co-
recovery. Service Science, 11(3), pp.189-200.
Zhou, and et.al., 2020. Understanding consumers’ behavior to adopt self-service parcel services
for last-mile delivery. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 52, p.101911.
Online:
Simon Reeve, 2022 [Online] available through:
<https://www.speakrj.com/audit/report/simon_reeve/instagram/>
Television presenter and author Simon Reeve becomes Brand Ambassador for Kuoni, 2022
[Online] available through:
<https://www.kuoni.co.uk/press-room/news-archive/simon-reeve-becomes-brand-ambassador-
for-kuoni/>
Monica, 2022 [Online] available through:
<https://thetravelhack.com/author/thetravelhack/>
Travel Blogger Interview With Monica Stott Of The Travel Hack, 2022 [Online] available
through:
<https://www.expedia.co.uk/stories/travel-blogger-interview-with-monica-stott-of-the-travel-
hack/>
Travel Influencers : The Future?, 2022 [Online] available through:
<https://www.bhavinbhavsar.com/travel-influencers-the-future/>
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