THE STATE OF TRAVEL on InstagramPresented

@monicakwatson

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: Introduction

PART 2: Meet the Instagram Travel Community

PART 3: Most Successful Brands and Destinations

PART 4: Fashion and Food Travel

PART 5: Conclusion

@kenziebell

@irinapivsaeva

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PART 1:Introduction

Over the course of Instagram’s life, travel has become one of the most important topics

on the platform. According to our recent Destination Marketing for Millennials and

Centennials report, the majority of these generations share both during and post trip,

and Instagram is the #1 platform where centennials share their travel photos and came

just behind Facebook for millennials.

This has lead to tens of millions of photos being shared - 56.8 million in just under 10 months from June 2015 to March 2016. And every photo comes packed with data.

We partnered with Macromeasures to drill into this content and bring you the State of

Travel on Instagram Report. In this report, you’ll discover the top brands and influencers

for travel on Instagram, the key trends emerging from the millions of photos shared,

and even get to know this audience of creators with demographic data.

3.8M 5.8M 6.6M5.5M 5.3M 3.7M

5.7M 5.9M6.8M 7.7M

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@ozeias

Jun Jul Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar

Photos Shared Monthly (2015 - 2016)

@ozeias

Who are the people behind the millions of travel photos shared on Instagram? The

majority identify as female - 58% compared to 37% male. These creators are 4x

more likely than the wider instagram audience to consider themselves “foodies,” with

seafood and tea being two of their favorite food types. As for other interests, they’re

far more adventure-focused as compared to others - 7x more interested than the

wider Instagram community in scuba diving and 5x more interested in hiking and

backpacking.

PART 2:Meet The Instagram Travel Community

@jleighfarrar

37%male

58%female

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Compared to other Instagrammers, this group is 7x more interested in The Economist,

followed by The Guardian. And of course travel publishers made the list - with these

people 3-5x more interested in Lonely Planet, Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler.

They’re also involved in other internet communities outside of Instagram, including

Vine, TripAdvisor, Pinterest, and 9GAG.

Top Publishers*

The Economist

The Guardian

Lonely Planet

BBC, Mashable, Travel + LeisureTpT

Condé Nast Traveler

7x6x5x4x3x

Top TV Shows*

Conan

Gossip Girl

Game of Thrones

4x2x2x

Top Communities Outside of Instagram*

Vine

TripAdvisor

Pinterest

9GAG

11x8x4x2x

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* To decipher these results, Macromeasures transformed the unstructured public social data from the millions of pieces of travel Instagram posts aggregated by Chute to create deep profiles on the demographics and psychographics of the audience and creators.

@ozeias

Looking at all the posts shared over 10 months, the original content creators (not

brands or repost accounts) whose content was the most engaging in terms of likes and

comments includes a National Geographic fellow, two Youtube influencers, a famous

Instagrammer, and one fashion blogger. The standout here is Paul - he’s the only

creator in the top list who exclusively posts about exploration and travel. Otherwise,

the creators are people or brands who have built up loyal audiences around other

topics - primarily fashion and beauty. The general rule of thumb has been that while

influencers are great to partner with for targeted topics, they don’t really hold sway

outside of their niche. For that, brands still need to work with traditional celebrities.

However, this is proving that the loyal audiences crafted by these internet celebrities

are just as interested and invested even when the creators go “off-topic.”

Not only that, but when it comes to finding influencers to partner with, it’s so

important to think outside of their total number of followers. Followers can be bought, and they can also quickly become disinterested. One of the key metrics to look at

instead is engagement to understand whose posts actually illicit reactions from people.

@jleighfarrar

Most Engaging Social Influencers

@PaulNicklen - Photographer

@MacBby11 - YouTuber

@CamilaCoelho - YouTuber

@TheLittleBlackDress.London - Instagrammer

@dblankstyle - Fashion Blogger

1.2.3.4.

5.

@foxy_traveller

@thefitbackpacker

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PART 3:Most Successful Brands

Of course, brands also factor into not only what people are sharing about but are also

some of the top creators on the platform.

When it comes to actually taking the photos, Nikon and the VSCOcam app come out

on top. Travel creators are 5x more interested in the Nikon brand than the rest of the

Instagram community, and out of the tens of millions of photos shared about travel 7%

were also tagged #VSCO or #VSCOcam.

In terms of Instagram shares, Delta got the most shares of their brand hashtag by

the travel community on Instagram - leading to 12.1K photos. The top post came

from popular cosplayer Yaya Han (@yayahan), who gave a shoutout to the brand for a

smooth trip, ending with, “I love being a Medallion member with them.”

@gregariously 5

Most Mentioned Airlines

AIRLINE HASHTAG AMOUNT (K)1. Delta

2. Lufthansa

3. Air Asia

4. Turkish Airlines

5. KLM

6. United

7. American Airlines

8. Icelandair

9. British Airways

10. Quantas

#Delta

#Lufthansa

#AirAsia

#TurkishAirlines

#KLM

#United

#AmericanAirlines

#Icelandair

#BritishAirways

#Quantas

12.1

10.2

10.1

8.3

8.1

9.5

9.2

8

7.9

7.1

@ozeias

Which brands had the best content? In terms of engagement, the brand who

consistently performs the best is National Geographic. Every month for the past ten

months, they have topped the most successful list of brands with their stunning photos

that provide followers with a window into different cultures and wildlife. Outside of

National Geographic, the list of top brands is a mix of mostly car brands and fashion

brands - with only Red Bull and GoPro breaking out of those categories.

What are these car and fashion brands doing to become so influential in the travel

space? They’re tapping into one of the most important personality traits of younger

generations - the desire for travel.

It turns out, car owners across the globe are incredibly proud of their vehicles and take

stunning photos. So many of the car brands, such as Mercedes Benz, rely on user-

generated content from these owners to fill their feed with authentic and stunning

media.

A huge part of fashion advertising is based around creating a lifestyle the consumer

wants to adopt, and for many people that includes jet-setting around the world.

The fashion brands here have all proven their understanding of their millennial and

centennial audiences’ desires for adventure and travel.

@jleighfarrar

@katejoie @katejoie

Most Engaging Brands@NatGeo - Publisher

@GoPro - Camera Brand

@MercedesBenz - Car Brand

@RedBull - Beverage Brand

@FreePeople - Fashion Brand

@Primark - Fashion Brand

@TopShop

@HM

@Ford

@TarteCosmetics

1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.

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@ozeias

The people posting about travel on Instagram aren’t exclusively sharing photos

featuring only destinations. Two of the most popular related topics are fashion and

food - more than 1.3 million travel photos were also tagged #fashion and there were

over 876K #food photos.

For fashion, the focus was definitely on luxury brands. The hashtag #luxury itself made

up 15% of posts, and when looking at the fashion brands this group is most interested

in compared to other Instagrammers, brands like MANGO and YSL top the list. As for

food, even though people are on vacation, they’re still focused on eating healthy (or, at

least, those are the meals they’re more likely to share).

PART 4:Fashion & Food Travel

@darlingonadollar

@lali_alfaro

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For travel companies and destinations, understanding the conversations happening not

just about travel but also around travel is vital to expanding their reach. People have other interests, and so should your brand.

For example, fashion. As shown previously in this report and also in this section, both

fashion influencers and fashion topics are huge among the online travel community. As

a travel brand, consider adding fashion related posts to your content lineup to attract

new people to your conversation.

Or perhaps develop packages that target this crossover of fashion and travel. For

example, an NYC hotel that’s already partnering with a fashion influencer for sponsored

content could develop a package with her that begins with a style makeover and

includes tickets to the Metropolitan Museum’s current costume exhibition.

#Fashion + Travel

photos

OOTD (Outfit of the Day) posts

#luxury-related

1.3M15%12%

Top Fashion Brands

MANGO

Yves Saint Laurent

Zuhair Murad

Daniel Wellington

5x4x4x3x

#Food + Travel

photos

#healthy

#hotels

#wine

876K7%3%3%

@kangthropologie

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PART 5:Conclusion

The data around what’s trending in social media is a great source of inspiration when

developing content for both on and off the Instagram platform. Think of it as your

evergreen focus group that you can tap into to glean trends and gage preferences.

These young travelers have many other interests – from adventure to food to fashion,

so play into related themes in order to grow your audience.

In our Destination Marketing for Millennials and Centennials report, we found that

for the majority of both centennials and millennials, authentic visual content from other travelers is what is most likely to convince them to visit a new place. Not

only that, but it consistently ranks in the top 3 platforms these travelers go to for

travel inspiration and is increasingly becoming the top spot they turn to to share their

own travel content. Instagram has become the pulse of the travel community, and

understanding it is vital for marketers.

@mikekamler

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Chute powers enterprise UGC for brands, agencies and publishers – from discovering

consumer photos and videos, both with visual and text search, to the ideation,

production, and amplification of compelling visual material. Chute works with some of

the world’s biggest brands and publishers including Benefit Cosmetics, NBC Universal,

Adidas, Brown-Forman, Condé Nast, NBA, United Nations, New York Times, and Ford.

For more information, visit www.getchute.com

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Macromeasures is built on proprietary machine learning and natural language

processing. Born at the Network Dynamics Lab at McGill University, Macromeasures

transforms the universe of public unstructured data into deep, dynamic and structured

profiles around who people are and what they’re interested in. Our analysis of this

unstructured data is based on what, when, and how an individual shares first and third

party content, what networks they are a part of, and tens of thousands of other data

points that collectively allow our system to infer detailed characteristics with high

confidence at the individual level.