Influencers And Luxury Hotels: What's Their Deal?

If you have an Instagram account, you probably follow one of these influencers who call themselves 'nomads'or 'travelers', and who fill up your feed with pictures of amazing places and luxury hotels that you dream you could visit.

We all do. Same as we all wonder how they maintain their lifestyle: traveling around the globe, sleeping in a bungalow in the Maldives one week and in a glass-ceilinged igloo in Finland the next.  

The truth is that many hotels are getting tired of them and struggling to find the right formula. 

In January, a luxury hotel in Ireland made the headlines for banning influencers and making public their answer to a social media savvy who asked for a free-stay in return for a video.

“If I let you stay here in return for a feature in a video, who is going to pay the staff who look after you? Who is going to pay the housekeepers who clean your room?"

But the truth is hotels shouldn't ignore bloggers and YouTubers altogether. Instead, they should learn how to work with them. Social media is now their best showcase. 

That's why 'real influencers' offer much more than just pictures in return. They provide images or video for the hotel's website, they train employees on Facebook ads and Instagram promotion. 

For this partnership to succeed, hotels too need to do their part of the job right.