Luxury hotel brands are tapping top travel and lifestyle bloggers with increasing regularity to kickstart social campaigns, illuminate what can be found at certain properties and to build connections with highly concentrated audiences.
Although hotel brands are fully capable of explaining the assets of a property to consumers, travelers are often wary of taking advice directly from the company that stands to benefit from giving that advice. Consequently, leveraging bloggers can help brands achieve a tone of authenticity that may resonate with consumers, while reaching larger pockets of consumers.
?There?s a large gray area these days when looking at writers and bloggers,? said Damon M. Banks,?director of?DMB Public Relations, New York.??There are a number of writers who maintain some level of a blog as a way to further explore their areas of interest, while also writing for a number of magazines and online outlets.
?There are a handful of these expert bloggers out there who can be very beneficial to hotels as they can provide a look at the hotel to their audience,? he said. ?In these cases, most hotel representatives know the bloggers who can bring them some level of promotion, and can focus on collaborating with these few individuals.
?These bloggers who have a social media following can provide insight into the property while they visit, as well as an overview at the end of the site visit.?
Grassroots
Bloggers generally build their audience from the ground-up, accumulating followers as the quality and volume of content increases.
Unlike hotel brands, or any brand for that matter, bloggers are unable to rely on the cachet of their name to amass large social media followings, which lends a note of authenticity to what they are doing as they have to work hard and prove their worth to gain devoted fans.
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