Vlogging 101 for marketers

According to Google/YouTube research, travel vlog content is the most popular travel content on YouTube, accounting for almost half of its travel content subscriptions. This content performs well across all age groups, but resonates especially well with younger Millennial and Gen Z segments.

What can we learn from these stats? Viewers are increasingly looking for more authentic content where they can connect with the host and feel like they are along for the journey. By living their travel dreams vicariously through the experiences of YouTube vloggers, viewers are finding fresh inspiration for their own adventures. If travelogue content was born on network television with celebrity hosts like Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmern, the next generation of travelogue content is being created by influential YouTube vloggers like Fun for Louise (with almost 300 million YouTube views), Hey Nadine or Sonia’s Travels.  

This insight is further supported by research from Travel Channel and Skift, which showed that viewers relate to travel content on five spectrums: authentic, relatable, attainable, experiential, and informational. The typical high-polish destination content we’re used to seeing in travel commercials and DMO websites fails on most of these spectrums, whereas well-performing vlog content on YouTube is more authentic and fares better. Relatable vlog hosts show their experience of attainable travel and do so in an informational way, which resonates with aspiring travelers dreaming of their own trips.

Travel brands and destinations can – and are – capitalizing on this insight by tapping influencers and producing travelogue style content for their brands. How to tap these influencers is another article entirely, but doing so can be the foundation for a great marketing campaign. In 2014, Origin worked with Tourism Whistler in partnership with travel content network The Matador Network, where we tapped an influential travel writer and travel TV host to create a travelogue video series called “The Insider’s Guide to Whistler”. But tapping this trend doesn’t necessarily require large budgets and complex productions – it can also be as simple as identifying influential vloggers, making it worth their while to visit your destination and leaving the story/production in their hands (just make sure they have a good experience to report on).