6 Crucial Steps to Planning a Travel-Based Influencer Marketing Campaign in 2025

Ever wondered how to create stunning influencer campaigns that stop scrolls and grab attention? The kind that not only delivers stunning content but also builds authentic connections and delivers on your marketing goals? 

This is where travel influencer campaigns truly shine. However, creating travel campaigns that drive results requires careful budgeting, planning and execution. 

From setting clear objectives to selecting the perfect influencers, every step of the planning process plays a key rule in your campaign’s effectiveness. In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to plan a travel-based influencer campaign that resonates with your target audience and delivers tangible results. Ready to create a campaign that fuels your business growth? Let’s dive in.

Understanding the value of travel-based influencer marketing

Travel influencer marketing is packed full of value, and if your brand isn’t investing in it, you’re missing out on a substantial opportunity. 

Unlike traditional influencer campaigns, travel campaigns focus on building partnerships that embed your brand into authentic, real-world experiences that deeply resonate with your customers.

When executed correctly, they turn global destinations into pitching platforms for your products by creating aspirational moments that your target audience wants to share and experience themselves. 

But how does it work, and why is it so effective?

Travel influencer marketing’s growing success is rooted in consumer psychology. Travel inspires emotions – adventure, discovery, wanderlust, relaxation – that people can connect with on a deeply personal level. Influencers tap into this and amplify it by creating visually-stunning content and crafting stories that transport their followers to these places. It’s an approach that builds trust, sparks curiosity, and drives action.

The numbers back it up. 69% of your customers trust influencer recommendations more than direct brand messaging. On visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok, travel content consistently outperforms, generating higher engagement and broader reach. 

How to plan an influencer travel campaign

Looking to build a campaign that takes influencers to exotic destinations and capitalises on the breath taking content opportunities they hold? Follow these 6 steps:

1. Define your campaign goals

What do you want to achieve from your travel influencer marketing campaign? Every successful travel-based influencer marketing campaign starts with defining goals.

Some of the most common core goals we help our clients achieve include: 

Increasing brand awareness: 

Do you want to introduce your brand to a new audience, build exposure with an existing audience, or tap into a new geography? 

Example: A hotel chain could partner with influencers to showcase properties in under-marketed destinations.

Promoting a new product/service: 

Looking to showcase a new range of SKUs in action, or place renewed focus on a best-selling product line? 

Example: An audiowear manufacturer could partner with influencers to demonstrate their noise-cancelling headphones on an international flight.

Driving sales through recommendations: 

Keen to drive immediate sales? Leverage the trust influencers hold with their audience to encourage purchases, such as booking a stay, trying a new service, or buying products for upcoming trips.

Read next: 5 Reasons Influencer Travel Campaigns Deserve a Place in Your Marketing Strategy.

Got your overarching goals set? Great – now it’s time to map them out against the SMART framework: 

• Specific: Looking to drive awareness and increase your social following? “Increase Instagram followers by 15%” is better than “Grow social presence”.
• Measurable: Set metrics to track your success, such as tagged traffic from social platforms or the clicks from influencer-specific links.
• Achievable: Make sure the goals you have set are realistic and attainable based on the time frame and the budget. If you’re working with an influencer marketing agency, they can help with setting campaign performance expectations.
• Relevant: Align your goals with your broader marketing strategy. For example, if you’re looking to expand into new geographies, make sure your campaign is tailored to that specific audience. 
• Time-Bound: Set a time-frame to keep your campaign on track, such as requesting that your influencers submit daily content and provide final creative deliverables within 2 weeks of their trip.

When managing multiple influencer relationships at once, setting in place frameworks like these will help you to keep things on track. 

2. Work out your budget 

You know your goals and what you’re looking to achieve from your campaign – now it’s time to work out how much you can spend. 

While the costs of planning a travel campaign expand beyond those of typical influencer marketing, they’re easy to manage if you know what to factor into your budget.

The core costs of your influencer travel campaign will include: 

• Influencer fees: The compensation you’ll pay to your influencers in return for their time and the content they create. If you’re working with an influencer marketing agency, they’ll negotiate these fees for you and often get preferential rates. 
• Travel and accommodation: You’ll need to cover the costs of flights and accommodation. Some influencers may also request a small daily budget for food and drink, but this can be negotiated.
• Content amplification: Allocate funds for repurposing influencer content, boosting posts and running paid ads to extend your reach.

Influencer travel campaigns have several moving parts, so it pays to expect the unexpected. Set aside a small portion of your budget for a contingency fund to cover unforeseen costs, like changes to travel plans and additional content opportunities your influencers find when on-location.

3. Choose your influencers and provide creative direction 

Your influencers are the backbone of your travel campaign. They’ll directly shape how your brand is perceived, how your message is delivered, and ultimately, the results you’ll see from your efforts. 

As a result, you need to find creators whose values, style and audience align seamlessly with your brand. Prioritise influencers that share your brand’s unique values, because they’re likely to create content that feels more authentic. For example, if one of your key values is sustainability, focusing on influencers who champion eco-friendly practices is a smart move. 

However, remember to prioritise engagement over reach. Followers can be a vanity metric and don’t always indicate high potential. With this in mind, be sure to dig deper into the data and use other metrics like likes, comments and shares to evaluate their potential impact.

Once you’ve identified your shortlist, scroll their feed and look at how these influencers have worked with other brands. Did their content feel natural? How well did they represent the brands in question? Did their sponsored and gifted posts garner engagement compared to their organic content? 

Want to find the right influencers, first time? Backed by proprietary technology and data-driven insights, Disrupt Marketing can quickly identify influencers that are aligned with your values and can deliver on your goals. Get in touch now to find out more.

4. Plan your itinerary and travel locations

A well-planned itinerary is the backbone of a successful travel-based influencer marketing campaign. The destinations and experiences you choose will shape the content created, the story told, and how effectively your brand message connects with the audience.

Here’s how to make that happen: 

Match your locations to your campaign goals 

What are you looking to achieve from your travel campaign? The destinations that you select need to match the goals you’ve set. For example, if you’re a wellness brand, you might prioritise tranquil retreats or relaxing beachside resorts. 

…And match your influencers to those locations

Mapping out your trips isn’t always as easy as sending Influencer A to Destination B. You need to dig deep into each of your influencer’s profiles and find those whose values and content styles align best with each destination. 

For example: 

• A wellness influencer with a focus on mindfulness and balance would be a natural fit for a yoga retreat in Bali, or a luxury spa in the Swiss Alps.
• An adventure enthusiast who thrives on high-energy, outdoor experiences would resonate more with rugged national parks or adrenaline-packed, active trips.
• A foodie influencer could highlight culinary hotspots in bustling metropolitan centres like Tokyo or Barcelona, creating content around local delicacies or exclusive dining experiences.

Don’t skip the due diligence

Careful due diligence will make sure you’re covered from a safety standpoint, too. By reviewing each influencer’s lifestyles and values will help you steer them clear of areas where they may face discrimination, or places that might cause conflict or contract breaches – think sending a sober creator to a nightlife hotspot.

Plan your travel dates and build your influencer agreement

Choosing the right dates for your influencer campaign is a crucial part of the planning process, and you need to consider key factors like:

• Seasonal demand 
• Destination-specific weather conditions
• Local events that enhance – or hinder – the trip

Once you’ve mapped out your dates and agreed on them with your influencers, make sure they’re stipulated in your contract. This document should outline the agreed timeline for the trip, any content deliverables you’d like to see, and deadlines for post-trip content. Clear communication like this will make your expectations clear to your influencer and help keep your campaign on track. 

Involve your influencers in the planning process

Working with influencers to plan the itinerary helps ensure the destinations and activities align with their personal brand and genuinely resonate with their audience. When influencers are part of the process, they feel more connected to the campaign, which often leads to authentic, high-quality content that truly engages their followers.

5. Build your content creation strategy

While you want your influencers to have creative control to help them produce authentic content that resonates with their audiences, you need to be clear on the types of content you’re looking to create. On the other side, being too restrictive can result in overly formal, rigid content that comes across as unnatural.

So, create and supply your influencers with a guide on the types of content you’re looking to capture, with information on key product benefits and brand phrases for them to use. This way, you’re able to exercise creative control without dictating what content they shoot, or how they shoot it.

Before your trip, plan the content types to prioritise and share these with your influencers: 

• Short-form vertical video: Instagram Reels, TikToks, and YouTube Shorts are perfect for showcasing dynamic travel moments, such as breathtaking views or exciting activities. These can easily be repurposed into powerful Paid Social ad creatives. 
• Stories: Instagram and Facebook Stories create a sense of immediacy, sharing real-time experiences like trying local cuisine or arriving at a scenic destination. These can also include clickable links to help you drive traffic to a particular product or platform.
• Long-form video: Looking for an in-depth showcase of your location or product? Long-form, vlog-style videos posted on platforms like YouTube can garner significant reach while telling more in-depth stories. 
• Blog posts: With well-placed links from high-authority influencer sites, blog posts can compliment your overall digital marketing strategy with middle and bottom-of-funnel content, complete with a powerful SEO boost. 

Once you’ve defined your deliverables, make sure they’re agreed with your influencers upfront, including the number of posts, the platforms they’ll be published on, and timelines for sharing content during and after your trip.

6. Amplify your content post-trip for maximum engagement and ROI

The work doesn’t stop when your influencers land at your destination and start creating content. If you want to maximise the ROI you see from your travel influencer campaigns, effective repurposing, syndication and amplification is key. 

Influencer content can provide value far beyond the original post, so make sure you’ve negotiated the rights to repurpose your creators’ content and have clearly stated this in your contract. When used correctly, it can become a valuable asset in your cross-channel marketing strategy: 

• Share key images and videos on your brand’s social media accounts to engage your existing audience.
• Chop and edit snippets from short-form influencer videos into ad creatives for your paid team to test. 
• Add influencer content across your product pages and emails to leverage social proof and build trust with potential customers who are making purchasing decisions. 

Track the performance of this content with engagement metrics like shares and comments, web traffic driven by influencer links or tags, and conversions attributed to your campaigns.

Disrupt takes the stress out of travel influencer campaigns

Planning a successful travel-based influencer marketing campaign takes careful planning, budgeting, coordination and strategy. However, the rewards are well worth the effort – when executed correctly, these campaigns create authentic connections, expand your reach, and drive real results. 

From strategy and influencer selection to campaign execution, logistics and post-trip amplification, our team of influencer campaign experts specialise in taking the stress out of the travel influencer marketing process. Tap into this powerful channel today – reach out for a chat.