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Guests do not choose destinations the way they did ten years ago. American Express Travel’s Global Travel Trends Report found that around three quarters of respondents had been inspired to visit a specific place after seeing it on social media, with the share rising sharply among travellers under 40.
The behaviour goes beyond inspiration. Speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in 2022, Google’s Prabhakar Raghavan said close to 40% of people aged 18 to 24 open TikTok or Instagram rather than Search or Maps when deciding where to go. For a growing share of travellers, social platforms are not what happens before the search. They are the search.
So guests now find hotels the way they find everything else: by watching someone they trust stay somewhere, and wanting to be there too.
For a large chain with a media budget, this is a channel to add. For an independent hotel with no marketing team, it is something more useful. It is the one form of marketing where you can compete on the strength of your property rather than the size of your budget.
What influencer marketing actually is
Stripped of the jargon, it is a recommendation from someone an audience already trusts, made in their own voice, on the platforms where that audience already spends its time: Instagram and TikTok above all, with YouTube mattering for longer travel content.
It is not an advertisement that happens to feature a person. The value sits precisely in the fact that the creator’s followers believe the creator chooses carefully. That trust is the asset you are borrowing.
For hotels, the output is usually a Reel or TikTok video plus a set of Stories, published during the stay or shortly after it. You get reach on the creator’s channel, and you get content you can reuse on your own.
Why influencer marketing works for hotels
Three reasons stand out, and they reinforce each other.
Your own photography can only do so much. The images on your website and your listing pages are careful, well lit and empty of people. They show the room, not the stay: not what the light does at seven in the morning, or whether the terrace is somewhere you would actually want to spend an afternoon. A creator filming their own visit shows exactly that. Choosing a hotel is a considered purchase, and people want to see what it is really like to stay at your property.
You can pay with inventory instead of cash. An unsold room night is gone by morning. You cannot store it, and you cannot sell it later. Give that same night to the right creator and it becomes marketing, paid for with something that was about to be worth nothing. Very few businesses can settle a marketing bill this way, and it is why a hotel with no budget can still run collaborations that a shop with the same budget cannot.
The bookings come direct. Booking platforms typically take 15% to 20% of every reservation, and up to 25% or more for prominent placement. A creator sends people somewhere else entirely: to your Instagram profile and your own site, rather than a listing page ranked against eleven competitors on price. Those guests arrive already wanting your hotel, and once they follow you, reaching them again costs nothing.
How hotels pay for creators
There are three models, and most properties end up using more than one.
Barter. You offer a stay, the creator produces the agreed content, and no money changes hands. This works more often than most hoteliers expect: 83% of creators, particularly at the smaller end, say they are willing to work for gifting alone when they genuinely like what is on offer. A hotel holds an unusually strong hand here, because a night somewhere beautiful is a far better offer than a product sample in a padded envelope.
Paid. A fee on top of the stay, and often travel costs as well. It buys you more control, a faster turnaround and access to larger creators. Worth it for a launch or a specific campaign with a deadline.
Hybrid. A stay plus a modest fee. Common with creators who have built real demand for their work but still want to travel. Expect travel costs to come up here too, particularly if the creator is flying in rather than driving over from the next city.
Whichever model you use, agree the terms in writing before the creator arrives: room category, number of nights, what is included beyond the room, travel costs, the deliverables and deadline, and whether you may reuse the content on your own channels.
The types of creators, and which ones suit hotels
A creator with a million followers sounds like the obvious prize. For most hotels, they are the wrong choice.
Each tier offers a different combination of four things: reach, range, engagement and cost. Reach is how many people see the post. Range is how varied that audience is: whether it spans dozens of countries, ages and interests, or clusters tightly around one city and one kind of traveller. Engagement is the share of those people who do something about it: like, comment, save the post, or send it to the person they travel with. Cost is what the collaboration takes out of your budget or your inventory.
As a creator’s audience grows, reach and cost climb and range widens, while engagement falls. No tier is strong on all four at once. Knowing what each of them looks like at every level is what lets you choose the right creators for your hotel rather than the biggest ones who say yes.
| Tier | Followers | Avg. engagement | Barter openness | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nano | 1,000 – 10,000 | 4% – 8% | Very high | Local awareness, independent hotels, first collaborations |
| Micro | 10,000 – 50,000 | 2% – 4% | High | Targeted reach, experienced content, shoulder season |
| Mid-tier | 50,000 – 500,000 | 1% – 2% | Limited | Launches, repositioning campaigns |
| Macro / Celebrity | 500,000+ | Under 1% | Low | Mass awareness, flagship properties |
Nano creators — 1,000 to 10,000 followers
The highest engagement rates of any tier, averaging 4% to 8%. Small reach, narrow range, closest relationship with their audience, and often highly local. Openness to barter: very high. A good stay is a fair return for them in a way it is not for a creator with a rate card. The natural starting point for an independent hotel.
Micro creators — 10,000 to 50,000 followers
Engagement averages 2% to 4%. Strong output, experienced at working with brands, and audiences narrow enough to be useful. Openness to barter: high. Many will accept a stay as the whole exchange, particularly in shoulder season.
Mid-tier creators — 50,000 to 500,000 followers
Engagement sits between the micro and macro figures, usually somewhere around 1% to 2%. Wide reach, professional output, and the first tier where you are usually negotiating money rather than nights. Openness to barter: limited. Some will accept a stay for a property they genuinely want to visit, more often as a stay plus a modest fee, and travel costs are usually part of the conversation. Worth considering for a launch or a repositioning, less so for filling midweek rooms.
Macro creators and celebrities — 500,000 followers and above
Engagement typically lands under 1%. Enormous reach, very broad range, and a cost to match. Their audiences are rarely concentrated in the feeder markets that matter to one property. Openness to barter: low. Expect a fee, an agent, and flights and transfers on your invoice, though a genuinely exceptional property can occasionally secure a stay-only deal at a flagship location.
The pattern across the tiers is consistent. A creator who recognises the names in their own comment threads carries more weight than one broadcasting to a million strangers. The smaller the audience, the larger the share of it that is genuinely paying attention, and the more likely the creator is to work with you on an exchange rather than an invoice.
Choosing the right creator
Ignore the follower count until last. Look at:
- Where the audience lives. It should overlap with your feeder markets.
- Who the audience is. Age, gender, and interests should match the guests you want.
- How the audience behaves. Saves and shares indicate intent. Likes indicate very little.
- How the creator works. Their existing content is the closest preview you will get of your own property.
Knowing whether it worked
Four things are worth tracking in the week after publication: saves, shares, follower growth on your own account, and the shift in who your audience is. They tell you different things.
Saves and shares on the creator’s content are the closest thing you get to an early booking indicator. Someone who saves a post is filing your hotel away for a trip they have not booked yet. Someone who sends it to a friend is having a conversation about going. Both are future guests, several months before they appear in your system.
Your own follower growth answers a different question: did this reach the right people? Look past the number to where those new followers are based and who they are. Twenty new followers in your key feeder markets is a better result than two hundred from countries you never sell to, and a shift in your audience towards the traveller you actually want is the clearest sign the creator was well chosen.
All of that is early evidence. What counts in the end is bookings, and those are trackable too. Give each creator a unique discount code or booking link, and you can see which creator produced which reservation, for how many nights, at what value. A code also nudges their audience to book with you directly instead of opening a comparison site. Keep it live for months rather than weeks: travel is booked far in advance, so a post in March can still be filling rooms in June.
One stay will not fill your hotel. Six or eight, chosen on audience data, give you a pattern you can act on. And when a collaboration works, run it again with the same creator: ongoing partnerships consistently outperform one-off posts, because a second and third visit build familiarity with an audience that has already seen your property once.
Where to start
Start with the guest, not the creator. Write down who you want in your rooms: which cities or countries they come from, roughly what age they are, whether they travel as couples, families or on their own.
Then look for creators whose followers look like that. Doing this by hand is slow, because audience demographics are not something you can read off a profile, and most of the messages you send will go unanswered. It is the part Rippla is built for. You describe the guest you want, and see creators whose real follower data matches: where their audience actually lives, what age it is, how much of it engages. Choosing on that rather than on a follower count is the difference between hoping a collaboration reaches the right people and knowing that it did.
Want to see how it works with Rippla? Two minutes with the demo below will show you the whole flow: setting the guest you want, comparing creators on their audience data, agreeing the dates.
