Since the beginning of time people have been traveling and sharing stories about their adventures with whoever they meet along the way.
In past years the travel guide was used heavily to help share these stories about places to go and things to see. The power of travel guides was always the visual element that helped to guide your imagination and peak your interest. From colorful pictures to large pull out maps and photos the travel guides were a great way to capture an audience. The magic that once surrounded these guides seems to have slowly faded as we now look toward digital mediums for most of our travel information but this presents a great new opportunity for businesses. In this article we’ll take a look at a social media app that’s begining to be used for marketing purposes and how Snapchat is becoming the modern travel guide
In 2011 a new startup called Snapchat was created and just four years later it has the potential to reshape the way we do travel marketing. The smartphone app works by sending a picture or video to anyone for anywhere between two and ten seconds. After the allotted time is up the picture or video is deleted and never seen again. In late 2013 Snapchat introduced another feature called your Snap Story. This new feature allows users to create their own ‘story’ that anyone who’s following them can view. This story becomes a compilation of pictures from the curator displaying their journey to the world.
With the release of the Snap Story users have had an even easier time informing their followers of their activities. This feature has helped to make curating content from other users even easier. Travel and hospitality organizations can allow their followers to send pictures to them then take those pictures and post them back onto their Snap Story, creating a collection of photos from all over the world or place for anyone to see.
The Snap Story and any pictures sent both have an interesting feature that adds to the power of this platform. To view any picture the users have to actively select it, this helps to focus their attention to whatever you’ve chosen to send them. In addition to the focused users, Snapchat also tracks how many users have viewed your pictures in real time. With built in analytics and the ability to focus users attention Snapchat has become a very powerful platform for marketing that’s often under utilized.
Snapchat allows hotels, restaurants, and travel organizations to share pictures of their destinations quicker than ever. With the visual power of Instagram combined with the timeliness Twitter, it brings a completely new way for travel marketers to reach their audiences. By looking at the benefits it offers marketers it’s no wonder Snapchat is becoming the modern travel guide.