To stay on top of trends and innovations that can help our members excel, the ATTA has undertaken a QuickPoll of our entire membership to better understand who has worked with travel bloggers, what their blogging results have been, and what they hope to learn about blogging’s future in tourism. Following this survey, the ATTA attended the 2012 Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) in Keystone, Colorado, to research the issues most important to our members - see the event report here.
Seventy-seven percent of the respondents were tour operators, with nine percent being tourism boards / ministries, and three percent accommodations. One percent were travel agents and the rest identified as “other” (associations, cruise lines, non-profits, camps, and consultants were included here).
Key takeaways:
Of the respondents, 61 percent have already worked with travel bloggers, in the following ways:
- 55% - Send them newsletters press releases or other marketing materials to encourage them to write about me
- 54% - Pitch them stories about my product or company
- 51% - Offer them free trip / stay so they'll write about me - as a press trip
- 48% - Offer them reduced rate trip / so they'll write about me - as a trade
- 37% - Employ them to create content
- 27%- Offer them a free trip / stay
Those members that have paid travel bloggers for content have hired an average of 2.7 bloggers. Almost sixty percent of these paid a flat rate for content, while twenty-three percent paid per article. Only six percent paid a per word rate.
When asked how effective working with travel bloggers for the following objectives on a 1000 scale, members answered mainly within the lower to midrange for all objectives:
- Creating content for my sites - score of 641
- Increasing views / members / hits to my social media site - score of 601
- Increasing referrals to my website - score of 558
- Supporting branding initiatives - score of 570
- Other (specific campaigns, marketing products, "too soon to tell," "have not measured" etc).- score of 429
- Increasing sales - score of 379