Starwood Uses Instagram Fashion Influencers to Drive Bookings for Its Newest Tribute Portfolio Hotels in Paris
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More travel and hospitality brands are trying to find novel ways to monetize Instagram and although the platform has evolved to try to accommodate more of marketers' needs, its abilities as a hotel booking channel remain somewhat limited. Still, Starwood's Tribute Portfolio is betting that user-generated content from influential fashion stars on Instagram can help them boost bookings at two of their Parisian properties.
The power of Instagram as a social media marketing platform, and that of user-generated, or earned content, is increasingly being harnessed into a tool for e-commerce. Today, Starwood Hotels & Resorts announced that it is enabling booking via earned content on Instagram for two of its newest Tribute Portfolio hotels, both located in Paris — Le Metropolitan and Le Dokhan's.
Tribute Portfolio partnered with consumer shopping service Liketoknow.it to enable the booking feature on posts from key Instagram influencers, but there's a catch. To receive links to book at those properties, Instagram users have to register first with Liketoknow.it. Currently, Liketoknow.it has approximately 1.7 million registered Instagram users, many of whom have registered with the site to be able to buy the items pictured in photos from their favorite fashion influencers. When these registered Instagram users double-tap on an Instagram photo tagged with @tributeportfolio, #independentmoments, and a Liketoknow.it-enabled shopping link, they will then receive an email that contains direct links to book a stay at one of the hotels on the Tribute Portfolio website.
The photos equipped with this feature will appear in five Instagram influencers' feeds. The photos will als
