The Luxury Collection partnered with Instagram travel and lifestyle influencers to launch and execute #JourneyCalifornia. A campaign that provided a real-time travel diary as 9th annual Shorty's awards finalist for Instagrammer of the Year, Paulo Del Valle and girlfriend, Raira Venturieri explored the coast of California. The pair stopped at three of our West Coast properties, sharing various stories of their expeditions as they explored each destination along their route. A destination-curated itinerary was provided to them at each stop by the hotel's concierge team.
The main goal of this campaign was to utilize this partnership to promote the brand of The Luxury Collection as The Destination Authority. Each property of The Luxury Collection is a unique expression of its location and is rooted in the distinct character of its locale. Through the #JourneyCalifornia campaign, we were able to showcase how our guests experience the destination of our properties along the coast of California. Del Valle and Venturieri documented their journey, in an authentic voice, through their Instagram accounts.
Our objectives throughout this campaign were:
Paulo Del Valle and Raira Venturieri posted Instagram posts and on-going Instagram stories detailing their journey through California, highlighting the campaign, the hotels they stayed at, and the destinations of the three cities their explored throughout their trip.
The Luxury Collection posted on the brand Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter channels to promote the #JourneyCalifornia campaign. The posts promoted visual assets provided by the influencers and drove traffic to their Instagram pages.
Del Valle and Ventureri introduced the tour through in-feed posts on their Instagram pages. At each city the tour stopped, San Francisco, Beverly Hills, and San Diego— the influencers shared stories of their experiences in the caption of their post paired with spectacular photographs they captured showcasing the unique beauty of the destination.
Throughout the tour, the pair posted to their Instagram stories, allowing the audience a real-time view of the journey so that they may join the pair and experience the tour themselves through social media. Featured on their Instagram stories were videos of the signature sights, experiences and activities that represent the destinations visited; along with videos of The Luxury Collection properties which hosted their stays.
As the pair moved through the destinations along #JourneyCalifornia, their social cadence was supported and elevated by paid and organic promotion on The Luxury Collection brand assets and property social assets.
Brand social accounts and property Instagram pages of the three hotels along the campaign's route promoted the tour, featured welcome and send-off posts for Del Valle and Ventureri and showcased what they would experience during their stay. The posts promoted the property as a Destination Authority, while also driving traffic to the influencers' Instagram pages. These posts featured pictures that the influencers took at the locations they experienced. This ensured the tone and aesthetic of each post throughout the campaign was consistent and authentic, because it was all through the lenses of our ambassadors.
In this way, we were able to reach the brand's full social community, the properties' social communities and the audience of Del Valle and Ventureri to join #JourneyCalifornia on the influencers Instagram pages.
Paid promotion though Instagram ads aimed at our target audience of experience driven travelers further drove awareness of this campaign, established The Luxury Collection as being the authority and concierge to the destinations which they are based and drove traffic to Del Valle and Ventureri's Instagram pages.
We also coordinated with The Venue Report to further the reach of #JourneyCalifornia. Through Instagram Stories and an article on the online magazine, we were able to share the story of the tour to a larger segment of our target audience. Again, this content linked viewers to @PaulodelValle and @Raira and ultimately elevated awareness of the campaign. The Luxury Collection promoted this coverage on its brand Facebook and Twitter.
The campaign was a resounding success. Hundreds of posts from @PaulodelValle and @Raira, the brand's Instagram account, and property social channels, allowed our target audience to join #JourneyCalifornia and experience an authentic extended tour of California's signature destinations and the properties of The Luxury Collection.
The pair posted 18 Instagram in-feed posts to their collective audience of over 392K followers. In under two weeks their Instagram posts garnered over 584K impressions and over 67K total engagements (Likes, Comments, and Saves,) representing an engagement rate of over 11.6%.
Furthermore, 220 Instagram Story posts on the influencers' channels, showcasing the influencers journey in "real-time" garnered 692K impressions.
4 posts on the Instagram page of The Luxury Collection promoted the campaign, each property destination, and inspired almost 10K engagements, with an average engagement rate of almost 2% per post. These four posts performed 5% better than our average post.
All metrics surpassed goals and benchmarks. Most notably the influencers' Instagram stories had an impression rate (calculated as impressions/followers* 100) of close to 2.5%, performing 3 times higher than the industry standard benchmark.
The Venue Report posted an article on their online magazine, and an Instagram Story featuring 13 posts to their audience of 105K followers, about the #JourneyCalifornia campaign— further extending the reach of this campaign.
All told, the campaign garnered over 1.62 million impressions on trackable posts alone, which does not include the thousands of expected impressions on The Venue Report's article and Instagram Stories.
