How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy for Travel Industry? 6 Proven Examples from Certified Agency

Are you a tour operator? hotel or resort owner? travel destination promoter, or associated with the travel industry? If yes, then you might be thinking about these questions for sure:

• What kind of travel content should I publish on my travel blog?
• How do I find the right topics for travel content?
• What kind of audience is looking for online travel content?
• How can I drive maximum traffic to my travel blog?
• How can I generate leads via my blog?
• How do I make travel content go viral on social media?

By the end of this article, you’ll learn how to create a perfect content marketing strategy for the travel industry. Yes, I’m going to share my years of experience working with OLBUZ, a certified digital marketing agency specializing in promoting the travel industry.

Since the emergence of technology and social media, the journey of a traveler has become quite different from what it used to be. Gone are the days when travelers relied on guidebooks with outdated information or even paper maps. Now, they have access to a wealth of information across the web in the form of personal experience stories from travel bloggers, photo-sharing applications like Instagram where numerous travel stories are found, vlogs managed by travel influencers, Buzzfeed or Wittyfeed guides, travel videos on YouTube and Facebook.

Platforms like TheIndia allow travelers who don’t own a blog to write about their travel experiences, which indirectly helps other tourists/travelers learn about various places. These platforms accept travel-rich content. National and international media houses also cover travel news, allowing visitors to schedule plans accordingly.

This real-time access to travel information has dramatically transformed how travelers plan a trip – from getting inspired to booking tickets and hotels. Travelers also plan their trips based on upcoming festivals, International Tourism Day (to cover events and vlog), local or regional events (like the Gangor festival), and many other similar reasons. This trend extends beyond individual travelers, as travel companies and tour operators have adapted by creating specialized tour packages catering to these event-based experiences and focusing on marketing these packages.

Each year on April 18th, the whole world celebrates World Heritage Day, also known as the International Day for Monuments and Sites. On this day, travelers visit national heritage sites, take photos and videos. Check out the video published by Incredible India on their Twitter account on World Heritage Day.

Nowadays social media has become a great place that travelers blindly trust before taking any trip. According to a report here are some interesting numbers how Gen Z  traveler decides his/her trip and what they do during trip.

• 53% Gen Z travelers turn to social media for travel inspiration.
• 70% Gen Z are influenced by media (TV, news, movies) to travel.
• 29% of Gen Z were inspired to travel to a destination in 2023 by TikTok.
• 35% of Gen Z travel on short notice (under 1 month).
• Gen Z travelers prefer Online Travel Agents (OTAs) for booking trips.

Well, that’s a lot of social activity. So, if you are a travel company or tour operator and planning content marketing for tourism, you must create content in such a way so that it can be viral and helpful on social media. Only then you can make the most out of your content marketing strategy.

Here, we are going to discuss about how different travel bloggers, media house, influencers and other people crafts their travel content and how audience gets attracted towards it. This list of travel content strategy will help you to curate your content in a way which easily targets large audience base.

Top 6 Content Marketing Strategies for Travel Agency

#1 Destination Specific Travel Articles

Destination specific travel articles refer to content pieces that are mainly focused on particular locations. These articles are also considered as travel guides for readers. These articles contain information such as how to visit, places to stay, things to buy, how local people are, best beaches or hill stations, local food, pub, bar etc. So how can one recognize an article as destination specific piece? Generally, the articles that mention one specific location and start with “Things to do in (location name)” or “Ultimate Guide to (location name)” are considered as destination specific articles.

If you are thinking about developing a destination specific article, you must remember one thing first that the internet is filled with such content. So to increase your content’s readability, you need to pick a unique place, put a creative twist in writing and include awesome images to attract readers stand ahead of the crowd.

How to find Destination Specific Travel Content + Topic Ideas

Before finding or researching about any topic you must do a proper keyword research about that topic. Suppose you want to write travel article on Kerala then first check what kind of keywords people are searching on Google. To do the keyword research you can use certain tools including Google Keyword Planner tool (Official), SEMRush, AHREFs and many more. Here i have prepared one keyword research list to write best possible content for travel niche.

In above screenshot you can see the list of keywords and average monthly searches on Google for particular keyword. I have added the heat map in search volume column to show which keyword can be good to write article.

Don’t get excited after seeing 135,000 search volume for “Tourist Places in Kerala” keyword because you won’t be the first person to write article on this topic. Yes, competition is another challenge in content marketing as you need to check how many blogs are ranking on this keyword, quality of their content, backlinks of the blog and many other factors.

So, choose keyword having good search volume and low competition. After choosing the right keyword now you can prepare topic accordingly and write detailed article on it. Make sure you follow complete content marketing checklist while preparing any content.

Here are some examples about destination based article topic ideas

• 14 Pics That Prove [Destination Name] is the Most Underrated Country of the World
• Free Things To Do In [Destination Name] With Your Friends
• Best Things to Buy in [Destination Name] – Don’t Miss These Souvenirs while Shopping in Kerala – Example :  17 Best Things to Buy in Kerala

#2 Top Lists Specific Travel Articles

Mentioning a complete list of a particular topic related to travel is another popular type of travel content Strategy. From the “best places to visit in a particular season” to “best things to do in a particular location”, “top food items to eat” to the “best things to buy” – all these fall into the category of list specific travel articles. To make such an article work, you need to have a catchy title and some superb images.

Just have a look at the article, titled “The world’s Top 10 cities for street photography”, published in Wanderlust Travel Magazine. It talks about some popular cities around the world for street photography, but what makes it a unique and share-worthy piece of writing is some spectacular and unique photos.

For tweet use this link:

🕉️As the countdown for the greatest night of #Mahashivratri (8th March) begins, are you looking for a place to celebrate this auspicious festival? Look no further! We have compiled a list of places where you can immerse yourself in the divine energy.👉https://t.co/jlyXTcNo0t pic.twitter.com/MctfSjXPhG

— TheIndia (@TheIndia_co_in) February 9, 2024

In list specific articles, it doesn’t restrict to places only but one can create lists of travel photos, travel activities like paragliding, festivals, things to do, near by picnic places , food dishes and many more things.

List Specific Content + Title Ideas

• 6 Best Places to Visit in [Place Name] During Monsoon Season
• 10 Food Dishes One Should Must Try During [Place Name] Visit
• 17 Unique Festivals Around the World Should be in Your Bucket List
• Top 12 Places for Paragliding Activities in [Place Name] to Witness Breathtaking View from the Sky

#3 Travel News Articles

Travel news article is focused on the details about any latest event, summit news, activity, sports news etc., happened at a particular location. Sometimes, such articles can be brand specific and promotional. Writing aptly, such news can be viral on social media and boost huge traffic within a short amount of time.

Here is an article, published in The Independent, where a summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore is mentioned. How this article has become a travel piece is really interesting. This article talks about Singapore’s luxury hotel St. Regis Singapore.

Times of India, where India’s PM Mr. Narendra Modi Visits lakshadweep. How This visit becomes an increasing in visits to Lakshadweep and become one of the top news.This News Increased 3400% of searches for lakshadweep.

Travel news is very crucial for both travel agencies and tourists. A single incident or news can affect the whole travel industry. Here are few travel news which went viral and affected travel industry positively and negatively.

• Shimla Water Crisis during the peak season
• Tourism in Spain increased by 32% after ZNMD movie
• Udaipur city awarded as best city of Asia by Travel + Leisure site
• How Will the Las Vegas Shooting Affect Tourism?
• Best tourist places to visit after Lockdown

#4 Travel Influencer Interviews

The travel influencers are those who travel across the world, give a unique perspective to every place they travel and actively be in social media with their live stream, videos, vlogs and more. Thus they have a huge following on their social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. Nowadays brands try to collaborate with leading travel influencers in order to get a great incentive for people to join their tour programs. Also, they can get promotional benefit across the influencers’ social channels.

Clint Johnston, the founder at Triphackr has 200K+ followers on Instagram and many leading media houses including CNN, BBC News, Mashable, The Huffington Post and other media portal featured him. So, here if you can reach out to any Travel blogger, influencer or runs successful travel vlogging channel then just reach out to them for a quick interview or track them if they are in your city or state for quick video interview.

Here is an example of travel influencer Mr. Manish Lakhani’s interview:

If you develop such kinds of travel influencers’ interviews, you will certainly get noticed online and make your content share-worthy. We have also noticed that lot’s of Travel Niche Instagram profiles posts photos from leading traveler influencers on their feed with their mention. If any travel influencer has any issue with it than he/she can contact to remove photo and if not then they engage with them by liking or commenting on the post.

#5 Controversial & Reality Subject

Writing on controversial and reality subjects is surely an art. Because you need to follow a responsible fashion while writing on such topics so that your article does not raise your readers’ collective blood pressure and bring any negative publicity for you. Leading media houses often write about such controversial or reality subjects, related to various places. Creating rightly, such stories can give you an immediate popularity and traffic. But yes, in some ways it often shows dark sides of a matter.

Here are some great examples to write about controversial & reality subject:

• Instagram Vs Reality – How Digital Age Tourism Changed Iceland – Graveine
• How Varanasi Showed Me the Truth of Unequal Life – Teja On The Horizon
• Inside the Controversial World of Slum Tourism – National Geographic
• Least Visited Countries in the World – JagranJosh

#6 Publish Travel Guide Videos

People short on time often opt to watch videos on YouTube instead of reading detailed travel articles or guides. This makes YouTube a game-changing platform for travel businesses, allowing them to generate significant leads and business opportunities.

While some travel businesses might find success through websites and cold calling, ignoring the potential of YouTube is a missed opportunity. Compared to traditional methods, YouTube can generate equally, if not more, leads due to its massive user base and engaging video format.

Travelers are devouring online videos more than ever, with travel-related content views surging 118% year-over-year according to YouTube. This highlights a golden opportunity for travel businesses, but creating consistent, high-quality video content can be time-consuming. Enter content repurposing: by transforming existing content from your website, blog, or social media into engaging YouTube videos, you can efficiently reach a wider audience and generate more leads for your travel business.

If you are into travel business and still confused about what kind of travel content you should publish on YouTube then don’t worry here is the guide.

“Tips to Choose Best Tour Package” – You can record one detailed travel guide video about best tips to book tour package which can include best season to visit, best time to visit, what kind of places one should include in package, how to book cab, best food and popular dishes of the region etc.

Check below video posted on TheIndia YouTube channel which displays the beauty of Munnar Hill Station Kerala.

So, this way you can also record video of specific destination and publish on your YouTube channel.

Final Words, In a nutshell, the travel and tourism industry can offer plenty of opportunities through creative content marketing activities. This sector gives you the freedom to use different types of content, all the way from persuasive photos to educational guides to Videos. If you want to harness the optimum benefits of travel content marketing, be entertaining, informative and inspiring through your stories. Be visual. Shape yourself as a go-to resource for your visitors.

So, what trick have you implemented to market your travel content? Is there any specific type of content that suits your travel brand? Do share here. I’d love to know.