Influencer and collab in our serviced apartment

[wondabar]

We run a few serviced apartments in a town. We have just been approached by an Instagram influencer with around 300K asking for a week's stay in one of our serviced apartments in return for her to mention it in her posts. We would be losing around £700 in letting her stay there. Should we do it? Just wondering if her mentioning it would attract more direct bookings.

You should do it, but on your own terms. The going rate is £700, so that's what it'll cost if they want to stay. Be proud of your product and don't undervalue it.
If you're really wavering, have a look at just a few of the 300k followers- I bet none of them are anywhere near your target market!
It's tempting to think of it as promotion, but £700 could buy you something targeted towards what you really need (if you're not already at a good occupancy rate), rather than fitting in with someone else's plans.

I would only refund her £700 if 700 people had booked through her.

I would not, I work in the creator industry and these type of brand partnerships always seem a bit of a bust and a cheeky grab.
300k is fairly small numbers, out of those 300k how many will a) see the post and b) be in a position (location, money, age wise) to rent your place, if you want go ahead ask for details on her demographics and active users who interact with her content and if you go ahead use a referral link/code for her to use, so you can see how much it actually helped for the future.

Thank you for all your posts and I think the unanimous answer is No! She used to be on a Soap and her followers are no doubt nationwide, and not necessarily in the town of our serviced apartment

Check the engagement rates before doing anything , have they bought followers etc

@stevalnamechanger how do I check the engagement rates?

No! and if you can't hear be up the back no!

phlanx.com/engagement-calculator

They should have also sent you a media pack with their request with their data

I work in this industry so I’m not just coming here with an ‘I hate influencers’ attitude I believe PP have.

It could be good for you if the audience is right. Agree on the deliverables and also see if you could use the deliverables for your own promotions too.

You can’t ask her to pay full price and then refund if she gets bookings. That’s insane. You don’t work for free so why should she? You could, however, offer a discounted rate which covers your costs such as cleaning and utilities.

I have had amazing results working with influencers to sell products.

We need a new acronym

FG - Fucking Grifters 😎

This.

I second what androidrighteen said.

Also most of those followers could be bots!

This is the way to do it, make sure you still get payment up front, and don't refund her untill you have the money in the bank ie if rooms are refundable don't pay her till after the stay or she may get friends to book then cancel.

Tell her no - 'exposure' doesn't pay the bills!
You could offer her a discount in exchange for the mention, but I doubt they'd go with it!

A better solution would be to go back to them with an offer of your own! they can pay to stay, but give a code to their followers. If enough of their follows use their code and come to stay by an agreed date, you will refund them the cost of her stay.

If they are confident in their influencing ability then it is a no brainer, they will still get a free stay! - however I would bet money they will not take you up on this offer ;)

Sorry just noticed this has already been suggested!

@stevalnamechanger thanks for the link - the engagement is 0.53%. We didn't get a pack from her PR company.

@GoldSilverBronzeTan - can you explain why it’s “insane” for the influencer to pay for a service they want to use anyway and then receive money back for posting a photo when people engage with it? I’m interested why that is not accepted in your industry. I understand upfront payment for bigger adverts or brands that approach influencers for advertising but not for a service the influencer wants to use anyway.

Nope. Didn't we used to call influencers freeloaders before the Internet? I'll be glad when real life finally kicks in for this vacuous bunch.

300k isn’t many followers at all. Maybe offer her a discount if you can but honestly I’d say no. But I hate the whole influencer scene.

I agree with PP to be cautious. If the audience is right and you have a clear idea about what you would like from the exposure it can be a good thing. We use influencers for our business but only as part of a planned campaign with set objectives and outcomes and with a budget and what product the influencers will be given to use in mind. It's very successful for us but we are always very clear with expectations from both sides in regards to payment/ product and content.

In your case it could be something you offer out of season with a discount so it's not free and covers wages. You could give them a code with a 5% discount for their followers to use so you can track success of the campaign. Of course it's only worth doing if their followers are your target market.

We do have influencers message us and ask if they can try our product (have free stuff) in return for exposure and we always say no to these but explain they are welcome to apply for the next campaign and give them details for it (we have only ever had 1 influencer actually apply for a campaign after reaching out to us).

We have found in our product area the reachers out pushing how many followers they have and demanding products or services for exposure to be generally CFs. I know someone in our local business forum who got particularly stung with her business as an influencer basically wanted a full package with all the extras for free plus services that they did not provide thrown in and expected it all free for exposure.

If you want to advertise online, look into running ads on Facebook. You can target them to your likely customers, and it's not that expensive.

This is a good idea. This is how it works in the travel press, a hotel or tour operator or booking platform arrange for travel journalist to stay for free in the hope that they will then bring attention and bookings to the property/country. So an influencer is not much different. If they can give tangible results it's a good trade off. It's advertising, that is how a lot of things work. I think people get put off by the term influencer because they think CF (or maybe there's a al
so a certain amount of jealousy, who, after all doesn't want free travel?) but it has become a job for many people and if she can bring more bookings, more (perceived) glamour and make your place look great (make sure she will be posting a lot of photos and videos) then why not.

I also remember the case in Dublin where the hotel owner outed the influencer who asked to stay. It was pretty unfair and bullying of him. I think he was being snotty to influencers as he must know that this is often how it works in the travel press. If, say, The Times had called and asked for the stay he probably would have accepted it. In terms of attention and engagement there are a lot of influencers who have more influence than The Times. If you can afford to let the week go and you ask for things in return I don't see the problem with it.

Except the majority of these influencers aren't 'the travel press', are they? I don't think he was rude, unfair or bullying - he just shone light on the 'influencer' scam, and the 'influencer' in question didn't like it one bit. He scrubbed her info, it got out because she outed herself trying to organise a pile on. I've added the request and his response below. It went on for quite a while, including her sobbing video.

Here's the video Stenson had done to explain how 'influencing' usually works. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2003460809934525

As a previous poster said, would you spend that amount of money on a single advertisement?