SKEMA Digital Marketing in Tourism and Events: Why Tourism Boards should use Instagram?

Instagram is an online photo-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services such as Facebook or Twitter. Instagram was launched in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Facebook has bought this application for $1 Billion in 2012. On January 2013, there are about 100 million of users and nearly 100 000 users in France. Each day on Instagram, about 40 M of photos are shared, 85000 users like the application and about 1000 commentaries are expressed each second. Instagram can be very useful for the tourism sector for different reasons. Indeed, it is an important communication network that can be used by companies in order to promote a destination by sharing and showing photos. Photos occupy an important place in the mind of the travellers who are going to choose a destination; therefore they can be easily influenced by them. Thereby, Instagram can be a precious tool before, during and after a trip. Firstly, this media social can have an impact on the visitor behaviour when this one is going to plan a travel. Indeed, by watching different photos and commentaries on a specific destination, the traveller can be strongly influenced in his decision-making. And it can be different tourism suppliers that publish photos on their own destinations by creating an album or even creating an online game to promote the destination. For example, some tourism offices (Brive La Gaillarde or Catalogne) have launched a game in the eyes of photographers. After, they gather the best photos taken by the “instagramers” and put them both on their websites or other communication tools. Then, during the trip, these different tourism stakeholders’ must more focus on the animation of their territory as well as the development of the visibility and the fame.

Thanks to Instagram, users have the possibility to create hashtags (word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #) which is a good mean to do promotion towards tourists. That means to express context around a given message, with no intent to actually categorize the message for later searching, sharing, or other reasons. It will be also interesting to sell customized products in accordance with the instagramers (tourist products in different sales point). Finally, after the trip, it is important not to forget preventing the instagramers to publish their photos not only on facebook but also on the website of instagram. All these steps are critical in the tourism experience. Indeed, with the multiplicity of tourism innovations for promoting a destination, it is critical to use the most efficient one. Photos, images often catch the attention of the travelers easier than other means of promotion.

Why tourism boards should use Instagram?

* Instagram is simple and quick to use. Contrary to a blog or a Facebook page, there is no need to write long texts

* Instagram benefits from the best of both Facebook and Twitter: the possibility to interact with the “like” and “comments” options, with the addition of a picture and a few words

* Users help to promote travel destinations. Here below, the screenshot of Murados’ account, a photographer, who publishes pictures of his girlfriend when travelling. With more than 240.000 followers, his travel pictures have an impact on a large audience.

* With more than 100 million of users and the current influence of the picture marketing, Instagram is the best tool to convince new travellers.