Influencer marketing is reshaping how travel businesses win customers, and the opportunity is substantial. For hotels, working with the right creators can drive brand awareness at scale, attract highly qualified new audiences, fill seasonal gaps in bookings, and generate a library of authentic content that performs across paid and organic channels alike. It can do all of this at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising, and with far greater credibility. Yet across the European travel and hospitality sector, most businesses are still operating well below the potential of what a structured influencer strategy can deliver. That gap is both a warning and an invitation.
A sector on the rise
Compared with fashion or beauty, the hospitality and wider travel industry has been relatively cautious in its approach to influencer marketing. Investment levels remain lower, and structural integration into the wider marketing mix is still catching up. But the momentum is undeniable. According to Kolsquare’s 2026 European Travel & Hospitality Benchmark, 77% of brands in the sector plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets over the next 12 months, five points above the market average, making it one of the fastest-growing verticals in the space.
The formats driving that investment tell their own story. Short-form video is identified as the single biggest opportunity for 2026 by 62% of travel brands, while paid media boosting and user-generated content are seeing the sharpest budget increases. The direction of hospitality and travel is clear: scalable, visual, performance-oriented content that converts aspiration into action.
Why influencer marketing is made for hotels and travel
Travel is inherently an experience business. No product description, however well-written, replicates what a creator does when they immerse themselves in a property and destination and bring their audience along for the ride. The content resonates because it feels real, and that authenticity is precisely what drives booking decisions.
This is why travel has become the most audience-first vertical in influencer marketing. A striking 92% of hospitality and travel brands work with micro-creators, one of the highest adoption rates of any sector, prioritising engaged, trust-based communities over sheer follower numbers. When it comes to selecting creators, 62% of brands cite audience demographics as their primary criterion, more than any other sector. Who a creator reaches matters far more than how many people they reach. The opportunity for hoteliers lies in the breadth of micro-influencers to really focus on a particular service or facility and showcase that to a specific audience. Whether that is organic cooking, holistic spa treatments or hotels with history to cite just a few examples. Hoteliers and travel brands alike now have the scope to align their brand offers more closely and in a much more targeted way with content creators and guests, than ever before.
The opportunity for hoteliers
For hotels and hospitality businesses specifically, influencer marketing offers a genuinely flexible toolkit. The key is using different creator profiles to activate different parts of the business. Consider implementing distinct strategies for distinct audiences to elevate influencer impact across the brand.
Gifting-model campaigns can deliver equally impressive results. hotel and travel operators now run extended campaigns offering travel, lifestyle and gastronomy influencers exclusive experiences in exchange for content rather than fees. These can generate strong engagement rates and support brand messaging and positioning, particularly when working with influencers who go above and beyond their content commitments.
Getting it right: what to bear in mind
The most common mistake hoteliers and travel businesses make is treating influencer marketing as a series of one-off activations. Sporadic posts generate fleeting visibility; structured, continuous programmes build brand preference and, ultimately, bookings. As one industry practitioner put it in Kolsquare’s benchmark: “Creating content and partnerships that feel, and are, real will be more important than ever.”
Three principles underpin every successful campaign:
- Prioritise fit over fame. An influencer whose audience closely mirrors your guest profile will outperform a bigger name with a misaligned following. Reach is a vanity metric; relevance is what drives bookings. For in-person event activations, it is also worth thinking about social fit between creators themselves to ensure the group dynamic enhances both the event atmosphere and the content produced. If you are working with an influencer team be sure to ask how they filter creator profiles to deliver a truly targeted and qualified approach. Factors such as audience demographics, location, content category, engagement rate and credibility score should all be part of the review process
- Align on values from the outset. Creators who genuinely connect with your brand produce better content and more credible advocacy. Be sure to verify that alignment before a partnership is agreed, rather than discovering a mismatch after the content goes live.
- Build measurement in from the start, not as an afterthought. Engagement rates, reach, follower growth, earned media value (EMV) and real-time dashboards should all be agreed before a single post goes live. Influencer teams should have live and relevant influencer reporting tools set up to track deliverables and demonstrate ROI throughout their campaigns, automating data collection and giving clients live visibility of campaign performance. Be sure you agree and understand the metrics before you engage.
The window is open, but not for long
The hotel brands scaling their influencer programmes now are building a real competitive edge. With budgets rising, creator pools expanding and short-form video accelerating, the gap between those who commit and those who dabble will only grow. The tools, the talent and the data are all there. The only question is whether you are ready to use them.
By Alicia Van Der Meer, Field Marketing Lead & UK Marketing Manager at Kolsquare
Alicia Van Der Meer will be speaking at this year’s TravelTech Show as part of the session “The new social battleground: TikTok vs Instagram and the rise of “influencer-to-booking”
TravelTech Show takes place from 24 – 25 June 2026 at Excel, London.
To find out more and register please visit: traveltech-show.com/register