Visit North Carolina celebrates and promotes deeply authentic experiences found across the state as a way to inspire travel and tourism. Not only do travelers have different interests, backgrounds, identities and preferences, they also have different physical abilities that impact their decisions to travel. Luquire’s objective with its 2023 influencer strategy was to find micro-influencers who could bring experiences of the state to life in ways that were authentic and inspiring to diverse travelers, including an extremely under-represented traveler group: those with mobility-related disabilities.
Americans with mobility-related disabilities spend $58.2 billion a year on travel and take leisure trips at a similar frequency to travelers without disabilities.* Despite being an increasingly active and interested traveler group, those with disabilities still experience significant barriers to travel, including difficulties with accommodations, mobility aid transport, and access to attractions. And, it’s hard to find travel inspiration and information that is relevant and helpful.
Partnering with Rachelle Chapman, a micro-influencer who has a mobility-related disability and uses a wheelchair, Luquire aimed to tackle barriers and perceived barriers to accessible travel within the state, to build up the content available from Visit North Carolina for this large, growing group of travelers, and to share it in a meaningful way – one that makes visitors with mobility disabilities feel seen and empowered to experience the incredible – and accessible – adventures that North Carolina has to offer.
*From “Portrait of Travelers with Disabilities: Mobility and Accessibility” report from MMGY
We partnered with Rachelle Chapman, @rachelles_wheels, to create a travel guide for wheelchair-accessible getaways across North Carolina. Part of our go-to-market strategy for Visit North Carolina as a whole, Luquire used data, analytics and insights to define four strategic traveler mindsets – mindsets we use to drive strategy and execution of campaigns and other paid and owned channel tactics. A wife, mother, disability advocate and avid traveler, Rachelle represents not one key traveler mindset, but three.
Some key aspects of Rachelle’s interests that we knew would resonate with other travelers included:
Over the course of 6 months, Rachelle traveled to experience six different North Carolina cities and towns, detailing:
At the end of each trip, the Luquire and Visit North Carolina teams worked with Rachelle to compile destination roundups for her audience, and compiled the insights gained from each trip into an evergreen travel guide and resource to live on the Visit North Carolina site. Handing Rachelle the mic to talk about her own experiences traveling in the state not only introduced her highly-engaged audience to travel in North Carolina during the activation, but also built content to inspire future travelers through real, candid experiences.
At the launch of Rachelle’s first partnership post featuring her trip to Hendersonville, N.C., she had 99,190 followers. Over the course of the partnership, the team worked with her to produce content across Instagram Reels, Stories and evergreen blog content for visitnc.com about accessible travel within the state.
Rachelle’s partnership helped Visit North Carolina reach travelers on multiple channels, in multiple formats, with content that added unique value. Here are some results:
