The travel industry’s vitality is deeply rooted in trust and inspiration. Today, travelers increasingly turn to user-generated content (UGC) to shape their travel decisions. Whether discovering hidden gems or experiencing destinations from a local’s perspective, UGC offers a fresh, authentic viewpoint that traditional marketing can’t match.
In this blog, we will talk about how UGC can help travel business owners with the travel UGC, how it can benefit them, and some of the best examples of travel UGC.
Travel Industry UGC Statistics
- When TravelPort asked 10,000 people across multiple countries what was important to them when planning a trip, 46% said they prioritized trust over everything else when choosing a travel provider. Trust is a paramount factor for travelers when selecting a travel provider. It further means consumers value reliability, honesty, and transparency when booking travel.
- 77% of travelers now use social media platforms in the early stages of trip planning. Social media content has become essential for researching destinations, gathering inspiration, and making informed decisions.
- In fact, 40% of US travelers over 30 have used TikTok rather than Google to research a trip. These stats suggest that younger travelers increasingly turn to social media platforms like TikTok for travel inspiration and recommendations.
Now that you know the significant statistics for UGC travel, let us look at how you can collect more travel UGC.
Impressive Ways To Collect Travel UGC
It is harder for brands to collect UGC in this highly competitive industry like travel. However, there are still ways to collect travel UGC with little hassle. Here are some of them in this blog:
Social Media Campaigns
Social media campaigns effectively generate more user-generated content for your travel business from your audience. These campaigns involve engaging the target audience and tactics such as contests, influencer partnerships, and interactive posts to encourage audience participation. With the right strategy, social media campaigns can effectively showcase a travel business’s unique experiences and offerings.
Utilize Email Marketing
Email marketing is the most underrated way to flaunt your UGC for travel. Since your email audience is your mindful content consumer, you can feed them with your UGC for travel in such a scenario. To begin with, you can opt for Tagshop to integrate visual reviews and user-generated content for travel across emails and newsletters.
You can also segment your email list based on travel preferences, past purchases, and interests to strengthen your email marketing efforts for UGC travel. This allows you to send highly targeted and customized emails with UGC travel to each recipient.
Run Contests and Giveaways
More than 40% of millennials choose a holiday destination based on its Instagram potential. This means everything related to the tourism industry must be visual, so when planning to run a giveaway or a contest, be sure to present it beautifully. The success of your promotion also depends on the prize. Choose something relevant to your industry for the prize. It should be alluring for your target customers; for example, if you want to attract an audience of beach lovers, don’t give away prizes at hill stations.
Partner With Creators For Travel UGC
Partnering with UGC Creator for travel content, or UGC, is a powerful strategy for companies in the travel industry. User-generated content such as photos, videos, and reviews created by travelers provides an authentic and trustworthy portrayal of destination accommodations and experiences. By partnering with UGC, travel businesses can leverage this content’s genuine and relatable nature to build brand credibility and engage with potential customers.
Engaging with travel User-generated content allows the travel business to showcase real-life experiences and establish an emotional connection with its target audience, ultimately influencing travel decisions. Through UGC partnerships, companies can also enhance their social media presence, website management, and overall marketing efforts. Brands can find UGC creators and influencers within the travel UGC space to expand their business’s reach and attract new audiences.
Utilize UGC Platforms
One of the best ways to collect UGC for travel is to opt for UGC platforms. These platforms are designed to gather UGC and connect with the UGC creators. One of these UGC platforms is Tagshop, which helps you discover and connect with organic influencers who can create authentic content that resonates with your audience. This can help build trust and social proof for your brand. Besides, Tagshop can help you in many ways.
To begin with, create a hashtag campaign related to your travel business and ask your target audience to participate in the campaign. This would encourage the users to talk about their travel experience and generate the required buzz around your travel brand. You can also embed social media content or UGC travel to
Tagshop ensures that it offers a simple and intuitive feature such as SnapUp, which helps users submit their UGC travel with just a QR code.
Striking Benefits Of Travel User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful source in the travel industry. It significantly influences the booking lifecycle, making it a top source for travel inspiration. Let us look at the benefits you can expect from travel UGC content. UGC serves as a powerful source of inspiration for travelers. When they see stunning photos and videos of destinations from other people’s perspectives, they are more likely to be motivated and excited about the potential of UGC in inspiring their travel decisions.
Engagement boost
UGC fosters a sense of community and encourages interaction among travelers. When people see others sharing their travel experiences, they will likely engage with your content by leaving comments, likes, and shares. This boosts your content’s visibility and creates a more authentic and engaging experience for your audience. When you showcase real-world experiences for your customers, you build trust, credibility, and a stronger community that engages with content now and in the future.
Booking increase
It is a genuine customer-centric approach. When the pandemic hit, nobody thought the tourism industry would ever grow. However, thanks to the power of UGC for travel, the industry saw its boom.
UGC serves as a powerful source of inspiration for travelers. When they see stunning photos and videos of destinations from other people’s perspectives, they are more likely to be motivated and book the trip.
Integrating UGC into your marketing strategy demonstrates that you value customer experiences. This, in turn, encourages your customers to become more involved in your communication and actions, ultimately leading to an increase in bookings.
Destination Awareness
Destination awareness is a crucial aspect of the travel and tourism industry. UGC plays a significant role in shaping perceptions, influencing engagement, and ultimately driving destination awareness.
It can include reviews, photos, videos, and social media posts created by travelers, which greatly influence the decisions of others seeking travel inspiration. UGC travel not only engages raises but also awareness around the destination.
Increase Loyalty with travel UGC.
Let’s face it: modern customers have many options, especially regarding Travel.
The travel industry is highly competitive, and your customer might already have abundant options when it comes to choosing their travel destination, accommodations, and experiences.
As a result, businesses must find ways to increase customer loyalty. One effective strategy is leveraging user-generated content (UGC). When you encourage travelers to share their experiences, photos, and reviews, travel companies can build authenticity with potential customers, ultimately increasing loyalty and driving future bookings. UGC does not provide social proof and allows travelers to connect meaningfully, fostering a sense of community and belonging. This can increase brand loyalty and advocacy as satisfied customers share their positive experiences.
Better ROAS with UGC Ads
UGC ads often have higher click-through rates and conversion rates than traditional ads. This is because they are more relevant and relatable to the target audience. When you use UGC in your ad campaigns, you can improve your revenue from ad spending.
UGC or user-generated content can include reviews, photos, and testimony created by the customers. When you incorporate user-generated content into your advertising, you leverage content that feels authentic and trustworthy to potential customers. This can lead to higher engagement and better return on ad spend. Besides, UGC can help build a sense of community around your brand by showing real people using your travel services.
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Travel UGC Examples
Sobroome
As a travel and tour guide, Sobroome wanted to increase website traffic. While it may sound easy, it was vital for them to understand that their custom web pages became their web pages after a minute of scrolling because of the pre-shot brand-generated UGC videos.
Realizing the gap in their marketing efforts, they integrated more user-generated content. With Tagshop, Sobroome used branded content and user-generated content for travel and turned it into a shoppable Instagram feed on their website. They tagged the products into their social feed, immediately resulting in the visitors becoming customers. This is possible authentic marketing with Tagshop.
Montenegro
Montenegro is a great place to go in Winter. You can ski, snowboard, and have fun in the snow. It is affordable and beautiful for the “mountain people.” Although a small country, it is incredibly diverse; looking at the tourism opportunity, the state decided to run a hashtag campaign and showcase the user-generated content or UGC video examples on its website using Tagshop.
As a result, they generated many Instagram reels for their hashtag campaign and eventually generated more engagement on their website.
Visit Aqaba
Aqaba is a coastal city in Jordan. It is a special place where people feel welcome and connected. It is a place where people share their culture and make others feel at home. To enhance tourism marketing efforts, they launched a hashtag campaign named #VisitAqaba, which allowed tourists to share their experiences. They ask their tourists to upload their posts using the designated hashtag. Using Tagshop, they aggregated all the Instagram content under their hashtag and showcased them on their website, eventually adding an engaging element.
Let Us help you
If you want to infuse your travel brand with authentic and accurate content, Tagshop is your rescue. Here is how Tagshop can help you in your travel marketing plan.
Shoppable Galleries: create visually stunning galleries featuring your customer’s best UGC travel, turning social media into a powerful sales tool.
Visual UGC Reviews: To enhance brand trust, integrate visually appealing testimonial videos, photos, and other media into your emails and newsletters.
ShopOn Bio: transforms your social media bio links into a shoppable destination, allowing users to easily explore and purchase the products without leaving the platforms.
Organic Travel Influencer: Discover travel influencers who are widely interested in your brand and are ready to become brand advocates. Connect with them via Tagshop and text, and collect UGC rights immediately.
Reel Shop: With Reel Shop, you can easily collect captivating videos from Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok and turn them into shoppable products on your website. You can also tag your products and make travel bookings easier.
Conclusion
User-generated content has become a powerful tool for the travel industry, providing authentic and related experiences with travel. As evident from the statistics in the blog above, travelers prioritize social media content, and UGC travels to gather information and make informed decisions.
Utilizing various platforms such as email marketing and social media campaigns, travel businesses can effectively showcase UGC travel, creating a more engaging and trustworthy brand image. Leveraging the UGC platform can further enhance the collection and connection with organic travel influencers who create authentic content.
Embracing UGC travel allows the genuine portrayal of destination accommodations and experiences, catering to the visual preferences of modern travelers.
With the right UGC approach, travel businesses can inspire and guide travelers in decision-making by providing personalized and trustworthy experiences that resonate with them.
