The Best Consumer Focused Blogs & Content Strategies in the Travel Industry

There are a few hotels and travel-related brands that have been hot on the content development trail for years. These businesses have clearly seen the benefits of developing various forms of content for their repeat/loyal customers + new visitors familiarizing themselves with the business/brand.

For some of these businesses, their content is their main business asset…it is why visitors continually visit their website and join daily/weekly/monthly newsletters. For others, the content goes toward building the brand as an authority for the target market/local area, and it extends the brands’ hand in continually communicating with the audience.

Our Favorite Consumer Blogs & Content Strategies from the Travel Industry

Standard Hotels (Hotel Brand) Blog Content – www.StandardCulture.com

Very focused on exciting events in the markets where the Standard has properties (Miami, NYC, downtown LA and Hollywood), their blog concentrates on eclectic-style content, which fits their brand/image and allows them to connect to their young/progressive audience and target market.

Kudos to Standard Hotels and their Culture Blog: they have truly become local area experts for their four markets. Additionally, they have a very focused and targeted approach to content development, which helps them to continually develop the blog in the most cost-effective manner because they don’t spend money trying to target users outside of their geographic areas.

Expedia & TripAdvisor (OTA, Travel Brand) User Generated Content 

Expedia has mastered using social media apps, surveys and contests — plus buying TripAdvisor, which is king of user reviews, means Expedia now offers an incredibly awesome online forum (content) with helpful advice from other travelers.

As you know, now that Expedia has full control over TripAdvisor, you can search rates and book directly from the TripAdvisor pages. Smart. This enables TripAdvisor to be present within the travel sales funnel in many different ways:

1. Discovery: blog/article style content to give you travel and destination ideas for your next trip
2. Research: forums allow you to find information from users past experiences about destinations and activities in every city around the world
3. Shopping: TripAdvisor owns hotel reviews. period.
4. Sales/Reservations: since its acquisition by Expedia, TripAdvisor now allows for a seamless shopping to booking process

Oyster.com (Hotel Reviews & Affiliate) Review Blog Content

Unbiased, REAL reviews of hotels: by only focusing on a few cities/regions around the world, Oyster.com is able to produce rock solid content that is incredibly helpful to consumers. By contrast, if they focused on every city around the world, their quality would not be the same, as they would be spread too thin. And the fact that they produce the content and photos themselves ensures the quality.

Southwest Airlines (Major Airline Brand) Corporate Blog Content — BlogSouthwest.com

Southwest was one of the first major brands and corporations to actively blog. Their content is mainly focused on:

• Company information: growth, new services, new routes
• Corporate culture: fun events happening at southwest.com, cool/fun info about southwest employees
• Customer service: changes or additions to services
• Travel and city information: information about the cities they service

Corporate blogs often become a public place for both their executive/VP level staff and their operations staff to communicate and interact with the audience. Hotels can take this same approach using the Director of Marketing or Concierge/Front Desk staff. The point is, it will seem like someone on property is reaching out to the audience and bringing in the human element to the blog.

Just run with it…

I hope these examples help to stir your creative juices…getting you to think about your own content development strategy, the one that will fit your business or brand the best. Start by thinking about your target market/customer: what information do they need to make their travel planning process better, more exciting or more efficient?

In the next post, we’ll show you how to take these ideas and turn them into a powerful blog strategy or travel guide section on your website, one that executes both a PUSH and PULL marketing effect. Subscribe to our Learning Center RSS Feed so you don’t miss it!

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