292 | People of Persuasion: Travel influencers grow in sophistication and significance in COVID-19 age
Summary: <br> {caption}PIN THIS: A map pin is part of the marketing collateral of ‘Let’s Go There,’ a social media campaign by U.S. Travel Association designed to encourage Americans to start thinking about vacationing and planning excursions in the COVID-19 age. Influencing travel via social media channels is not new, but it’s taken on more significance as travel consumers shift their lockdown state of mind to one of safety as they venture out. The coronavirus pandemic is giving travel influencers new meaning as well, say professional travel bloggers, communications experts and brand marketers who see influencers becoming more trusted as content creators that target their messaging to specific consumer demographics.{/caption}<br> As consumers emerge from lockdown mode, hoteliers should consider adding social-media-savvy tastemakers to their marketing schemes, say experts<br> he U.S. Travel Association says “with the right recovery initiatives in place” the nation’s travel industry will begin to heal from the gutting caused by the coronavirus pandemic.<br> A major step toward bringing back 800,000 jobs and generating more than $70 billion in travel spending in 2021 is the association’s <a href="https://www.ustravel.org/programs/accelerating-travels-recovery" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Let’s Go There</a> social media campaign that’s all about enticing Americans to start thinking about taking vacations.<br> The nation’s travel industry has a long way to go.<br> STR last week reported hotel occupancy for the third quarter of this year averaged 48 percent, a decline of more than 32 percent in the same quarter of last year. RevPAR averaged $48.58, a decline of 48.5 percent. STR notes, “The absolute occupancy and RevPAR levels were the lowest for any Q3 in STR’s U.S. database.”<br> In an Oct. 23 <a href="https://str.com/data-insights-blog/video-us-performance-results-q3-2020" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">presentation</a>, Jan Freitag, senior vice president of lodging insights at STR, said business performance will most likely not improve in the fourth quarter. That’s mostly because of the dearth of corporate travel business.<br> Freitag said some significant findings emerged in the third quarter. Americans prefer limited-service hotels over full-service properties. They prefer to stay in hotels in rural markets versus urban accommodations, and they would rather drive than fly to destinations.<br> The current reality has the travel sales and marketing sector working to come up with new ways to encourage Americans to go on a road trip, even though COVID-19 remains a threat to health and safety.<br> To that end, the <a href="https://www.ustravel.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">U.S. Travel Association</a> recently launched Let’s Go There, a social media campaign that encourages Americans to start planning a getaway.<br> Let’s Go There has more than 60 partners representing hotels, resorts, destination markets and theme parks. The multi-tiered program uses multimedia content in the form of videos, photos and graphics that focus heavily on health and safety protocols adopted by hotels and travel-related businesses. It also encourages consumers to practice safety measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing.<br> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-king-129a249/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Brian King</a> of Washington, D.C., is global officer in charge of digital, distribution, revenue strategy and sales at <a href="https://www.marriott.com/marriott/aboutmarriott.mi" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Marriott International</a>, and is co-chair of the Let’s Go There campaign.<br> The U.S. Travel Association and supporters began to develop the program at the beginning of summer as they watched coronavirus outbreaks surge throughout the country and the travel industry continue its nosedive into negative territory.<br>
