Starwood’s Tribute Portfolio brand is partnering with shopping platform LiketoKnow.it to let users book a stay by tapping photos on Instagram photos posted by Starwood-paid influencers. Two new hotels in Paris, Le Metropolitan and Le Dokhan’s, can now be booked in this way.
The process requires travelers to tap on an Instagram photo and then complete the booking via an email automatically generated by the tap.
“Considering our target audience of socially connected, independent-minded travelers and that we are a new brand of independent hotels, social media is very important for us,” Dave Marr, global brand leader for Tribute Portfolio, told Digiday.
“Of course we hope to see increased bookings as a result of the partnership — but it is more of a secondary goal,” he continued. “We partnered with LiketoKnow.it primarily to drive new brand awareness and engagement for the brand’s target demographic: the socially connected, independent-minded traveler.”
Instagram has been making changes to the platform, such as allowing all users to post videos up to 60-seconds long, that align its capabilities more with parent company Facebook and that also give brand marketers more playing room in terms of the creatives they post to the app.
The biggest soon-to-be change is that users’ timelines will no longer be strictly chronological and will instead be based on an algorithm to highlight posts that are likely to be interesting for users. Marketers have expressed concerns that the change will hurt organic traffic and will require more paid posts to make sure followers see the content, similar to how marketing has evolved on Facebook.