Leveraging Instagram For FREE Travel

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Today I have something priceless for my fellow traveler addicts :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Below you will see a well converting template for the hotels from my friend’s friend who already travelled to 4 different countries for free. (best working on 4 star+ hotels) in the template you proposing different hotels for you to have a FREE stay in exchange for reviews/videos/bio links etc… (You can negotiate the deal) Of course you need to have a decent following in specific niche, before reading the email template; you need to read this first to get an overall idea:

First you need to understand that’s it’s a service that you are providing, it isn’t new, lots of people done it before and still doing it, what’s new is that Instagram influencers can now step in and play the role. Lets begin:

How to find hotels to stay in

Just start googling hotels that are in the area where you plan to visit e.g ‘hotels in Bali’, if you doing it for the first time, don’t plan out to contact multibillion dollar hotel chains, as their expectations will be rocket high and the chance to hit the deal is very small as a newbie. Begin with hotels that have under 100-150 hotels worldwide. Try out Bali as it’s currently Influencer heaven right now (it’s easiest place to start). Try to find the hotels marketer director email or sales department email, you don’t want to talk to front-desk people as they don’t know what to do with it.

Services that you can provide

Promotion or content creation, if you are content creator like photographer or videographer then you are good to go, you create some content for them such as beautiful photos or promotional videos and everyone is happy. If you not then no worry as many people offer their services by offering Instagram promotion. Recommended followers to begin are 100k followers+ but some people manage to pull it off with 20k followers. So for promotion, you have a story shoutout where you basically have a walkthrough of the hotel, show all the good stuff
about the hotel that you are staying in (4-5 story videos of complete hotel walkthrough) and on timeline post you will upload a picture or a video of the hotel and say things like "thanks (hotel name) for accommodating me…(say nice things about the hotel), make it look casual not to look salesly.

Charge Rates

I would recommend to offer your services for free first couple of times just to get a good idea and know what to expect and hot it works, after you can do the math, if your account has 500k followers and you charge regularly $700 for a post and a night stay in the hotel is usually $100 per night and you stay in for 3 nights which is $300, then you charge additionally $400 for your promotion. If you are staying for the full 7 nights and you want to make money then you need to provide extra value to hotel on your page to get extra 700$. You can also offer consultation to hotel on how to grow their Instagram hotel page for your rate $$$ per hour. You can also offer to grow their Instagram page for them.

Email Template

IM NOT TAKING ANY CREDITS FOR THE FOLLOWING TEMPLATE as I am re-sharing it with you guys with permission!

Good afternoon,
My name is (…) and I am the owner of the Instagram account (…) which has over (…) followers.
The account is purely focused on the Travel niche and all of its followers are highly targeted and interested in content related with travel.
I am emailing you because I would like to propose a partnership between (hotel name) and me, as an Instagram influencer.
My Instagram page accounts for more than (…) unique weekly visits and between (your average) and (your top results)+ weekly impressions on the posts, depending on the performance of the content posted.
I would love to partner up with (hotel name) because I believe we would be a great fit, as the hotel has not only incredible facilities that would allow the creation of incredible content, but also the destination itself is really admired by travel lovers, mostly youngsters. (only include this last part if it makes sense)
Since more than ( “x” % in your specific case) of my followers have between 21-29 years old, I truly believe this partnership could benefit both parties.
I’m ideally looking for a free stay for (number of nights) that include food, in the month of (your specific case).
I am travelling with (someone/alone), therefore just (number of rooms) would be needed.
When it comes to the promotion, I am open for options. I will post daily photos/videos, I will include the link to your website on the bio of my account for the duration of my stay
on the hotel, and will also do some natural story posts while staying on (hotel name).
Content and caption can be decided together. If not, I would love to use my creative side!
I would also love to offer you a detailed analysis of your hotel’s Instagram page, including some tips and explanations to improve your Instagram Strategy.
I am totally open for a counter proposal.
Looking forward to hear from you,
Kind regards,
Your name

I hope you guys enjoyed this little article, if you have any questions be sure to hit me up or leave a comment, I will be more than happy to help.

Best Regards
-Max

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Looks like a great write up, thank you. I believe someone posted something similar not too long out, how to get free hotels/etc via Instagram influence.

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oww, my bad :sweat_smile:

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Nice tutorial.

We do this on a local level and it works like a charm!

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yes, cold calls work good aswell , if you know how to talk to the prospect then your conversions will be higher compare to cold emails.

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What about paying the hotel instead of letting them think your post will actually benefit them? Because we all know it won’t get them customers.

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Well it really depends to be honest, if you have low quality-fake followers then sure expect everything to produce 0 results! Therefore I must strongly disagree with you. What you saying is like Garyvee promoting his book and receiving 0 sales from it, sound impossible right? Read some case studies on influencer marketing with hotels like: Hilton hotels, Marriott, Starwood Resorts, The Ritz Carlton to change your perspective. Many people underestimate influencer marketing simply because they don’t know how to properly use it right.

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Influencers are fine, but random travel IG accounts won’t work imo.

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Great post!, we book these regularly for influencers as part of our business and negotiate contracts with brands on a daily basis. We’ve made over half a million in revenue over two years for influencers so hopefully this is some good advice and add ons to the above below.

(this advice is if your an influencer doing it by yourself and don’t have an agency doing it for you)

1 - Try and send a DM or email initially to ask for the marketing department details. Keep this really generic and brief as if you go, having the right contact will take you further than having the right stats or content.

2 - Ask for a ‘media rate’, at worst, you’ll get an incredible discount on the stay, then once you have this, leverage this by saying you were offered ‘X so and so from a rival hotel in the area’ . Obviously don’t blatantly lie either, make sure your giving them value as the original poster has said.

3 - Have your followers tag you in a recent social post of theirs, you can then say you were ‘recommended’ to visit, it will give you social proof and make you look like you’ve done your research and this wasn’t just you trying to get a free stay.

4 - Send a good media kit - We add all of our influencers statistics, and make sure its about THEM and what they are getting out of these stats and why its so relevant. Make sure this is no more than two-three pages, i’ve talked to a lot of marketing departments and anything over this annoys them.

5 - Lastly and this is what works so well - put together a mini marketing plan for them that relates to YOUR stay. I would pay for a giveaway myself (buy like $50- 100 worth of product to giveaway. Have a clear focus to drive people to their socials and make it relevant your stay. Marketers will LOVE this. The best part about this, is you could easily do this with a PAID hotel stay (you pay for it initially) and then leverage this in your media kit for future stays at other hotels, it seriously makes you look like a star and has worked really well for us.

Added bonus tip/ collab with tourist activities in their area that aren’t competing with their services and create some cross promotion activity!.

Of course, if they check out your profile and love your content the above will be irrelevant and you’ll breeze right through! I cannot emphasize how relevant your statistics and a good engagement plan to drive conversions for them are though!. Good luck.

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Good provided value, thank you for that :blush:

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Can you give a clear example of what you mean by this?

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Great post. I’ve done this with my 1M travel page and gotten free hotel/tourism board stays for the past 8 years. You HAVE to give value in return though, don’t take it for granted. Remember hotels get dozens of influencer requests per day, and most will have more followers than you, so your approach and offer need to be unique.

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