Beth Santos, founder and CEO of Wanderful, and creator and host of the Women in Travel Summit, talks influencer marketing and what it might mean for the travel industry with Media Planet.

Why is influencer marketing the next big thing for the travel industry?

The travel industry is going through some major changes. The rise of low-fare transit like Norwegian has democratized travel and made it easier than ever before to get to new places without spending a lot of money. Social media has made travel planning and discovery accessible — we can discover and learn about new places that we’ve never seen or even heard of thanks to Instagram and Pinterest.

Creators and influencers are at the forefront of that. They build their entire brands around being able to provide authentic, real feedback, and recommendations about places and products to an engaged community of warm leads. Their ROI is incredible — influencer marketing has been proven to have 11 times the return on investment of traditional advertising. And it’s measurable. You can see and modulate the amount of reach you get in real-time by using analytics and data.

But the best part of influencer marketing is that you can use it to reach audiences outside of your network. By tapping into the knowledge and community of an influencer, you can get a unique perspective that can speak for you, that you’d never be able to make yourself. More and more industry members are beginning to see that, and to look to influencer marketing as a way to build exposure around their destination, product, or service.

Continue to read the entire interview.