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With nearly one in four online travel planners using Pinterest as a resource––often beyond the initial inspiration and ideation phase––marketers and advertisers looking to reach travelers should consider the value Pinterest has to offer.

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

Pinterest has become a powerful platform for customers, from the dreaming stage to the doing stage. Despite common misconceptions, Pinterest isn’t only for DIYers and creatives looking for recipes, home makeover ideas, style and beauty tips. The visual discovery platform is also a valuable resource for travelers and the marketers looking to reach them.

Travel is one of Pinterest’s most popular content categories. As of February 2017, there were 3 billion travel-related Pins on the platform. And though the number of travel-related Pins is high, travelers aren’t only saving “pin-spiration” photos to fantasize about trips they might one day take––they’re actually using these Pins to help plan and book trips, to make decisions right before departure and as a point of reference during the trip itself.

The Booking Journey

It’s no surprise that Pinterest is a popular go-to for people in the inspiration and ideation phase of the journey, whether they’re dreaming about a budget backpacking trip or a honeymoon. People commonly use Pinterest to discover, learn about, and actually do the things they love.

However, it may be somewhat surprising to learn that travelers also use Pinterest as a visual search engine to help plan what they should eat, drink, wear, and do on their trips. In 2016, Deep Focus Intelligence Group conducted a survey of 2,000 Pinterest users and non-Pinterest users in the U.S. who have traveled in the past six months, or planned to travel within the next six months. The study found that three out of five Pinterest users use the platform to help them plan their travels––and those who do so are more detailed in their planning than non-users. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of travelers who plan travel online use Pinterest for this purpose, putting it on par with Google, Facebook, and major travel sites such as Expedia and Priceline.

Planning travel on Pinterest leads people to take action, collaborate with others, and make well-informed decisions, often translating to actual bookings and purchases. Deep Focus found that 62 percent of Pinterest travel planners will click on a Pin for more information, while nearly half of these planners show their ideas to someone in person. Another 48 percent of Pinterest travel planners say the platform helps them find hotels to book.

Once a traveler books a trip, Pinterest is there when the time comes to start packing and organizing the nitty-gritty details of the trip. Deep Focus found that Pinterest users are more likely than non-Pinners to want a resource that gives them tips on how to get to their destination, as well as tips for inspiration while they’re traveling. Travelers commonly turn to the site to help them decide what to pack, how much to budget, and how to map out their itineraries.

No matter what step of the journey they’re in, travelers who use Pinterest are a highly engaged, detail-oriented, thoughtful and creative group, open to new ideas and inspirations. Incorporating striking imagery, tasteful design and action-oriented, mobile-friendly content into campaigns will help your brand reach, engage, and gain the loyalty of this highly captive group.

To learn more about travel trends on Pinterest, visit the Pinterest for Business blog.

This content was created collaboratively by Pinterest and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.

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Tags: content marketing, Travel Trends, trip planning

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