MGBBT0UCT Understanding Customers: Influencer Marketing in Tourism

This essay delves into the impact of influencer marketing on consumers in the 21st century, examining the collaborative efforts between brands and social media influencers for product promotion. It explores the rise of influencers as online celebrities with significant fan bases, highlighting their role in shaping consumer purchasing decisions. The essay discusses the concept of influencer marketing, its effectiveness, and the importance of identifying the right influencers to build consumer trust. It analyzes two travel influencers, Paul Steele and Mark Smith, examining their brand endorsements and the products they promote, and how they connect with their audience. The essay further explores the future of influencer marketing, emphasizing the role of technological advancements like AR and VR, the shift towards collective influencer groups, and the increasing importance of video content. It concludes that influencer marketing will continue to be crucial for brand promotion, connecting audiences with their favorite brands and influencers, and adapting to future trends in the marketing industry, including the integration of computer-generated imagery.

UNDERSTANDING
CUSTOMERS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
INFLUENCER MARKETING..............................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Influencer Marketing is a collaboration between the brands and the online influencers for
promotion of the products or services. It is a kind of marketing on the social media platforms
which involves endorsements of products through organisations and people. The individuals
which have a huge fan base on social media platforms are considered celebrities of the online
world. The influencers makes a collaboration with the brands and performs campaigning on their
social media platforms(Golderzahi and Pao, 2018). It is considered an effective marketing
technique since people have trust on these influencers which convinces them to purchase the
products. The essay discusses the concept and role of influencers on the customers in the 21st
century. The two travel influencers are identified along with the products and brands they
endorsed is also examined in the essay. The future of these influencers on the society is also
analysed in the essay.
MAIN BODY
INFLUENCER MARKETING
It is a kind of partnership between the companies and the social media influencers for
promotion of the products or services. The reason behind this is the huge fan following of these
influencers on the social media platforms. This helps the brands in appealing to a large segment
of audience in the market. It is a famous method which is used by the organisations for
advertising the goods and services. The importance of these influencers is increasing day by day
with the rise in the number of brands in the market. It is very essential for the companies to
identify the right influencers in order to create a positive image in the minds of customers. It
creates credibility and trust in the consumers when they see the influencer they follow promoting
the products and services. It is very important to make collaboration and partnership with the
authentic individuals who are having experience and are good in convincing people through their
actions and speeches(Kim and Krishna, 2022). This assists the brands in paying attention on a
specific segment of customers in the market. The companies conveys the message to these
influencers and they pass it on the customers. These influencers make attractive posts on their
accounts which increase the engagement of their followers. This directly leads to improvement in
the brand value of the companies. Therefore, it is very essential for the brands to choose right

kind of influencer for promoting the products and services. There are several points which are to
be considered while making a collaboration with the influencers. The cost involved in the
process of partnership can sometimes make an impact on the operations of the company. Another
things is, it is a very time consuming process which involves firstly selection of the right
influencer, checking the history and then make communication with the influencer. It does not
always gives positive outcomes to the brands.
The first influencer from the travel and tourism industry is Paul Steele. He is the founder
and CEO of Baldhiker. He is a former British soldier who embarked on a series of hiking
expeditions to lose weight. It is a website on which Paul Steele shares his views and blogs related
to the travelling and tourism(MateuMateu, 2020). He has more than 1 Lack followers on twitter
which is a really good number. He has been voted the world's most influential traveller. It has
been seen that he generally promotes brands which are related to travelling and tourism. The
products which are endorsed by him are gadgets, skin care, clothing and footwear's. All these
products are useful when any person is travelling to some place or area. The followers have
maintained their trust because of the authenticity and kindness of the person. He convinces the
followers to purchase the products which are promoted by him. The clients directly interact with
the team of Paul Steele and makes enquiry regarding the goods and services. He is often seen
sharing his experience regarding the travelling. He makes posts on his social media platforms for
promoting the products of the brands which have collaborated with him. The most essential
brands which are endorsed by Paul Steele are ChilliWinter Aromatherapy, Amazfit T
Smartwatch and Magware Cutlery. He also covers live events for the brands and increase the
popularity of the brand in the market. This directly makes a positive impact on the revenues of
the company.
The second travel and tourism influencer is Mark Smith. He is an British citizen and runs
the website the man in Seat 61. He is a former rail industry worker. He is a traveller and his site
now has receives more than one million visitors every month. The site has won various awards
which includes 'Best Travel Website' in the Guardian & Observer Travel Awards in
2008(Sangpikul, 2022). He has travelled in various countries such as Spain, Switzerland, Greece,
Russia and many other countries ion Europe. He is very popular for his reviews and guides
related to travel and tourism. There are various brands which are promoted by Mark Smith.
Mostly, all the brands collaborate with him and promotes their products and services through his

websites. He advertises the travel mediums and accommodations which provide useful and
relevant knowledge and information to the people. The website is very famous and attracts a
large number of individuals. Generally, it has been seen that the followers generally knows about
the endorsed products and services through the website. The posts which are shared by Mark
Smith on the social media platforms encourages the customers in getting more information about
the products and purchase the goods and services which are endorsed by the their social media
influencer. The site is called Seat 61 after his preferred seat in First class on the Eurostar.
The value of the social media influencers will increase with the rise in the technological
advancements. These will play a very crucial role in making a brand or product popular in the
market. The brands will get to select from a wide range of influencers which will be beneficial
for the customers in the market(Singh and Srivastava, 2020). It has been seen that Augmented
Reality and Virtual Reality have been emerging very quickly in the society. It will definitely
become an essential aspect in the growth and development of influencer marketing. The
businesses will focus more on making collective groups of influencers for better promotion of
the brands. The organisations will also shift their attention to single-source operating system.
The future of influencers will be very bright as it will become a proper profession in future to
collaborate with companies and earn their livelihood. More and more people will make quality
content and increase their fan following on the social media platforms. There will be more
awareness regarding the influencer marketing in the society. Also the content which will be
posted by the influencers will be monitored closely. This will reduce the chances of
misinformation and misunderstanding between the brands and the customers. The influencers
will focus on producing content more in video content. This will help in providing information in
a better way to the audience. This will enhance the trust of people on the influencers and brands.
The role of artificial intelligence will be crucial in the process of influencer
marketing(Yarimoglu and Gunay, 2020). There will be formulated policies for making the
collaboration with these influencers in a proper way. The future will provide many opportunities
to these influencers to make their presence in the market.
From the above essay it will be concluded that influencer marketing will play a crucial
role in the promotion of brands and products. There is a wide scope of these since it connects the
audience with the favourite brands and influencers. The companies have realised the importance
of influencer marketing in making the brand popular in the market. There are various strategies

which are prepared by the organisations for making collaboration with the right influencers. The
essay has analysed the concept of influencer marketing and its impact. The two travel influencers
have been identified along with their products selection and choices are also discussed in the
above essay. Also, the future of these influencers in the society is also very bright which makes it
These help in building long term associations with the influencers which simplifies the process
of influencer marketing. The entry of computer generated imagery in the marketing industry has
changed the way brands view collaboration. There will be new trends in the marketing in the
future which will make the world surprise. The influencers play a keep role in making the brand
popular among the masses.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Golderzahi, V. and Pao, H.K., 2018, July. Understanding customers and their grouping via wifi
sensing for business revenue forecasting. In International Conference on Machine
Learning and Data Mining in Pattern Recognition (pp. 56-71). Springer, Cham.
Kim, S. and Krishna, A., 2022. ‘I’ll stand by you:’understanding customers’
Mateu Mateu, J., 2020. A Bayesian implementation for predicting and understanding customers’
purchase behavior (Master's thesis, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya).
Sangpikul, A., 2022. Understanding the subjective and objective assessments of service quality
through spa customers’ E-complaints in Bangkok. Journal of Quality Assurance in
Hospitality & Tourism, 23(3), pp.569-596.
Singh, S. and Srivastava, R.K., 2020. Understanding the intention to use mobile banking by
existing online banking customers: an empirical study. Journal of Financial Services
Marketing, 25(3), pp.86-96.
Yarimoglu, E. and Gunay, T., 2020. The extended theory of planned behavior in Turkish
customers' intentions to visit green hotels. Business Strategy and the
Environment, 29(3), pp.1097-1108.