In order to cover the much anticipated reopening of Italy to tourists, we wanted to give our audience a timely look at what it was like to travel to this much missed destination in May 2021. We aimed to take our viewers through every step of the planning, booking, and travel process in order to comprehensively prepare them for their own Italian vacations and answer any questions likely to come up along the way.
Our strategy to meet these objectives can be summarized as follows: (1) Be prescriptive in setting expectations. For this story, we leaned into the details, knowing that this 32 frame story could very well act as a travel agent for an ambitious follower looking to head out on a summer jaunt to Venice or Florence. We knew this would not be our most visually stunning piece of content, and that was okay. For this story, utility was king — explanations on medical forms, experiences with customer service, and booking processes took precedence over aesthetics. (2) We were honest in our reporting. Even though we position ourselves as the industry expert in the points and miles space, we recognized that we were doing something unprecedented for the first time — and letting our followers in on the process to see the ins and outs for themselves. We didn’t shy away from admitting when things were confusing, stressful, or overwhelming, allowing our humanity and authenticity as a brand shine through.
In total, the Instagram story attracted 951,838 impressions with each frame averaging 29,745 impressions — up 98.3% from our established 2021 impression benchmark. The story also had a 98.46% completion rate, indicating that this information proved both timely and useful to our audience. Where applicable, the story linked to the TPG article "I was one of the first American tourists to fly to Italy on a COVID-tested flight: Here’s what it was like," which garnered 69,447 pageviews. 15.6% of the article’s traffic came from social media, namely the Instagram story.
