5 Reasons Why Influencer Travel Campaigns Deserve a Place in your 2025 Marketing Strategy 

What if your brand could be part of your audiences’ dream vacations, providing value along their trip as they step outside of their comfort zones and explore the world? 

With travel influencer marketing, it can be – and it’s a strategy that’s quickly gaining popularity with everyone from punchy e-commerce start-ups to established travel brands. 

But why does this matter for your marketing, and why should you consider it as part of your 2025 strategy? In this article, we’re going to showcase five clear benefits of travel influencer marketing, examining how you can leverage this channel to drive explosive engagement and growth. Let’s dive in.

What is the purpose of influencer travel campaigns? 

Your customers crave authenticity and originality. However, right now, their social media feeds are cluttered with cookie-cutter experiences and generic hard-sell ads. 

This is great news for you. Why? Because it presents an invaluable opportunity to create content that both grabs attention and shares new perspectives. Influencer travel campaigns are the perfect strategy for bringing this to life.

Influencer-led trips have fast become a powerful marketing strategy, offering a way to create authentic stories around real travel experiences that tie directly back to purchasable products and services. As your followers crave genuine, immersive content, these trips allow influencers to bring products and destinations to life in a way that feels relatable and engaging.

5 tangible benefits of travel influencer marketing 

If you’re looking for new channels to grow your reach and drive conversions, travel influencer marketing deserves a line in your budget. Let’s take a look at some of the key benefits that brands investing in this channel experience: 

1. Audience Engagement

There’s something sacred about travel – a human experience that we all relate to and share. 

Travel influencer marketing thrives on this authenticity, giving your brand the chance to connect with new and existing audiences through genuine, lived experiences. Whether it’s an untapped destination that’s yet to hit the mainstream, a hidden gem restaurant or an ‘eat like a local’ cultural experience, travel influencers bring destinations and products to life in ways that traditional ads can’t. 

With this kind of authentic storytelling, you create a tangible sense of trust and authenticity, as your followers see unfiltered glimpses of what it’s really like to explore a place, or engage with your brand. 

Today’s travellers, especially Gen Z and millennials, are budget-conscious. When this audience segment sees content from your brand that focuses on navigating the same challenges they face – like finding budget-friendly accommodation or tricks to making trips more affordable – they’re more likely to see that influencer as someone they can relate to and trust. 

This powerful social proof allows you to build, cultivate and leverage an engaged, trusting and loyal community that buys and buys again.

2. Reach New Audiences

Influencer travel campaigns aren’t just for travel brands – they’re a brilliant opportunity for businesses across multiple sectors to connect with their audiences in new and engaging ways.

By aligning destination content with your unique product offering, you can tap into passionate, engaged communities – even if your offering isn’t directly tied to the travel and tourism industry. 

For example: 

• Tech companies: Focus on remote work or digital nomading to promote travel-friendly gadgets or products that make the travelling experience easier. 
• Health & wellness companies: Show their products in action, such as a hydrating sun protection SPF on a beach, or a gentle anti-bug spray on a tropical forest. 
• Food brands: Feature exotic local cuisine with influencers dining at hidden gem restaurants.
• Fitness brands: Highlight athletic wear or gear during outdoor activities like hiking or beach workouts.

These types of creative influencer travel campaigns showcase authentic contexts where your products become a natural part of the influencer’s experience. As a result, your content feels less like an ad designed to sell, and more like genuine, value-adding advice. 

3. Creating Impactful and Shareable Content

Think about the last time you scrolled through Instagram and paused on a post. Chances are, it was a striking image or video—something that broke the monotony of your feed and made you stop to look closer. 

This is the impact that travel-focused content can have. 

From breath-taking rural landscapes to vibrant city backdrops, travel provides your creators with outside-the-norm backdrops – the perfect foundation for scroll-stopping content that stands out on social platforms, grabs audience attention, and drives engagement.

For your brand, this means the potential for vitality. More eyes on your product or destination, more engagement in the form of follows and clicks, and more conversions. 

But travel content gives you much more than that. By working with travel influencers, you’ll build out a library of content that you can syndicate and repurpose for use on other channels. Unboxing videos can be used on landing pages to give inside peeks at your products, travel clips can be turned into GIFs ready to add into onboarding email sequences – the options are endless.

Influencer marketing in action: The Delphin Hotel Group approached Disrupt Marketing to raise their brand awareness and drive booking considerations for the upcoming holiday season. Working with a small group of seven influencers, we delivered 8.6 million impressions, 760% beyond the target set.

4. Increased Brand Awareness and Loyalty

Travel holds deep emotional significance for many people. It’s a way to escape, explore and connect, and this holds true even during challenging economic conditions. In fact, our research found that despite the ongoing cost of living crisis, more Brits travelled in 2023 than in 2022 – and only 8% indicated that they’d cut back on their travel budgets in the face of financial pressure. 

However, despite this, around 40% of travellers still prioritise affordability when making travel plans, seeking value without sacrificing the quality of their travel experience. 

This presents a sizeable opportunity, and influencer marketing can help you tap into it.

By partnering with content creators who highlight affordable travel options, including hacks and money-saving tips, you position yourself as an ally in making their travel dreams a reality. The result? Content that resonates with your target audience, helping to improve brand awareness and foster loyalty with your target audience.

Influencer marketing in action: Wizz Air aimed to partner with influencers to showcase the great travel experience, affordable fares and value in order to boost their brand reputation and customer confidence in the UK. By partnering with Disrupt, they drove 6.5million impressions and over 383,000 engagements, garnering substantial awareness for their brand. 

“Thanks to Disrupt’s extensive network and data-driven approach, we have observed that influencer campaigns, alongside other market activations, have contributed to the growth of our brand awareness in the UK.”

Galana Enyaeva, Social Media and Influencer Marketing Manager – Wizz Air

5. Increased Conversions

Your target audience might trust travel recommendations from friends and family, but they trust recommendations from influencers, too. 

The numbers are there to back this up. In fact, research shows that 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations over information directly from brands, making influencers a powerful tool for shaping purchasing decisions. 

In the minds of social media-savvy travellers, influencers act as trusted guides, providing a reliable and authentic source of recommendations for destinations, accommodations and experiences. The parasocial relationships that followers hold with influencers make them view their positive first-hand experiences as personal endorsements that feel genuine. 

This trust translates into influence, with followers more likely to book similar experiences or try recommended products. 

Discover the power of influencer travel marketing, get in touch with our expert strategy team now.