Travel Site Partners With Prolific Instagramers To Crowdsource Travel Guides

For its 10th anniversary, luxury hotel booking site Splendia took to Instagram to both create unique crowdsourced city guides as well as boost its awareness level. Working with Paris-based agency Kindai, the travel site launched Instagramers City Guides, a visual guide for locations such as Rome, New York, Istanbul, Barcelona, Lisbon and Paris.

Splendia reached out to influential Instagramers with a passion for travel and photography such as Vutheara in France, Misshattan in the U.S. and Saaggo in Mexico. Over the course of the year, the brand collected images from the global travelers as they traversed iconic cities across the globe and recently launched the first edition of the Instagramers City Guide.

Though the site displays the “like” and “favorite” counts of the various photos that have been brought together, it isn’t actually connected to Instagram, nor are visitors able to interact with the photos directly.

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By the end of the year, Splendia will compile all the images taken by Vutheara, Misshattan, Saaggo and others and create a print edition of the guide, marketing it internationally as well as sending it to all of its Gold Club members.

Over the course of the year, Splendia has amassed over 47,000 followers and almost one million user interactions which, it claims, has propelled the hotel booking site past TripAdvisor and Booking.com. Currently, TripAdvisor has 31,273 followers, and Booking.com has a paltry 3,059.

The brand plans to create a second edition of the city guide; but this time, it will reach out to all of the brand’s followers for a chance to get involved with the creation of the guides. All people have to do is tag their travel photos with #SplendiaHotels to be considered for the guide.

Here’s a case study of the campaign:

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Steve Hall

Steve Hall is a marketing professional, publisher, writer, community manager, photographer and all-around lover of advertising.