It’s not a secret that there are more and more hotels are having trouble filling their rooms, the competition from AirBnB is huge. This creates a very large opportunity for Instagram Influencers to travel to their favourite places completely for free. Hotels are constantly looking for partnerships with influencers that can sponsor their hotel on their Instagram page in exchange for a complimentary stay. Here are 5 ways you can land a hotel for free.
1. Engage with the content of the hotels you’d like to stay in.
If you want to get a free hotel then it’s very important to grab their attention, social media managers are constantly looking for influencers that might be a perfect fit for the hotel to invite. So if you like and comment on each post the hotel posts the likelihood of you being seen by the social media manager is very high. Make sure you always stay positive and say nice things about the hotel, this of course speaks for itself.
2. Cold call the hotels
I know, a lot of you don’t like cold calling, but it really works. Like I said, hotels are constantly looking for Influencers they can collaborate with. Make sure before you call them that you have your call script written down. Here is something that I like to use and works a lot of times to get your foot in the door.
Call the hotel and tell them you’ve send them an email 2 days ago but that you just found out that your web host was down that day and that you don’t know if they’ve received the email and if they did, if they respond since you couldn’t receive any emails. They will always refer you to the right person in the Social Media department.
Make sure before you do this that you actually have a website and that you write down the email of the hotel in case they ask what email you’ve send it to.
3. Make a media kit to send out to hotels
A media kit is like your resume, it’s 1–2 page document with a headshot, the amount of followers, your reach on your pictures and at the bottom you can add which hotels you’ve worked with in the past if you have. If you don’t have any experience in designing a media kit, canva.com is a very easy tool for this.
4. Send the hotels an email
Just send the hotels an email, hotels always respond to emails because they want to stay customer friendly. But make sure you’re writing a good email, here’s what you should include:
- Greeting
- Introduce yourself and what it is you do
- Tell them why it is you’re sending them an email, to see if they work with Instagram Influencers and to let them know what it is you want.
- Show them the stats of your account, your reach, followers, demographic and why you would be a good choice to partner up with for them
- Make sure you lay out clearly what you’re offering in exchange for a complimentary stay in their hotel.
- Thank them for their consideration.
- Make sure to attach your media kit to the email
Tip: Try to find the emails of the marketing or public relations department of the company, if you can’t find these go for the general ones, contact@hotel.com, info@hotel.com etc etc.
5. Send the hotels a DM on Instagram
Slide into those DM’s, there’s nothing wrong with it. Send them a DM with a quick message about that you have a great opportunity for them and if they’d like to know more to send you over their email. No one can resist a great opportunity, hotels neither. Send them that DM and then in their latest post add a comment where you say ‘hey @username, check your dm.’ Once they checked their DM’s and told you they are interested send them an email with your media kit and the purpose of your email.