Social media photo opportunities are a key driver of travel destination choice

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This was published 8 years ago

Social media photo opportunities are a key driver of travel destination choice

By Jamie Freed
Updated
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It might be a photo of a beautiful sunset, an idyllic tropical beach or a quaint Italian village.

The chance to replicate the image yourself - and to share it on social media to jealous friends and family members - is now a key driver of destination choice for travellers. The latest Expedia "State of the Nation" survey of Australian travellers released on Tuesday found photo opportunities were very important to 85 per cent of the respondents.

In the age of Instagram, Facebook and the selfie stick, tourism marketers have taken notice of the trend.

Angkor Wat in Cambodia is the sort of iconic photo background travellers are increasingly seeking.

Angkor Wat in Cambodia is the sort of iconic photo background travellers are increasingly seeking. Credit: iStock

Rise of the digital influencers

A whole new profession has sprung up in its wake, with the job title of "digital influencer".

Lauren Bath, formerly a chef, now considers herself a professional Instagrammer, having amassed 450,000 followers.

"I'm marketing destinations and travel brands to my online audience," she told the Travel Daze conference in Sydney on Monday. "I love what I do and being able to inspire people to travel."

Her clients have included Intrepid Travel, Helloworld and winery Grant Burge. On a typical job, she will post three to four photos and captions a day, clearly indicating to her audience that the content has been sponsored. She then provides measurable outcomes to her employer in terms of likes, engagements and the number of new followers to the brand's Instagram account.

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Fellow Instagram pro Li-Chi Pan, who has worked for Tourism New Zealand, Flight Centre and Dubai Tourism, said she will take up to 50 photos before finding the "one perfect shot" to share with her followers and help inspire them to travel to a particular destination.

Seeking social capital

Amadeus IT Pacific managing director Tony Carter said his company's research on future "traveller tribes" had found one of the six types of travellers were social capital seekers, who would research and book their travel largely for the value it would have for them on social media.

Some savvy industry players are already capitalising on the trend. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Paris has offered a "Selfie in Paris" package including the use of a private car equipped with Wi-Fi and driver for three hours to take the traveller to locations providing the best backdrops for selfies in the city. However, Expedia's survey found despite the hype, only 7 per cent of Australian travellers considered a selfie stick to be a travel essential at this stage.

Looking to lure offshore visitors, Tourism Australia earlier this year created the "world's longest selfie stick" in a marketing campaign aimed at the Japanese market.

Tourism Australia has been among the global leaders in taking advantage of the trend toward social media, with 1.9 million followers on Instagram - more than any other tourism authority. It features user-generated content to help engage and grow its social media audience at a low cost.

People power

Tourism Australia global manager social and content Jesse Desjardins said 90 per cent of comments were followers tagging one of their friends or family members in a move that could encourage them to visit Australia. "That's much more powerful than if we say it," he said.

Paul Nahoun, the travel vertical lead at Facebook, said travel was the most talked about topic on the social media platform. But he said the latest trend was toward sharing videos through Facebook rather than just photos. While the number of photos shared has grown by 30 per cent over the last year, the number of videos shared has grown by 94 per cent.

"Video is the focus moving forward in that visual language space for Facebook," Mr Nahoun said. "It is about telling the right stories to the right people at the right time."

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