How to Work with Hotels and Aligned Brands

Tune in or read the blog version below!

This week’s episode is How To Work with Hotels and Aligned Brands. I’m so excited because this week we are checking out Magic Hills, which is a bamboo house in east Bali.

I’ve worked with the owners before. They also own another bamboo house that I stayed at a few years ago when I was in Bali.

I really want to explain what goes on behind the scenes of working with hotels. And also, I know I’ll be getting questions like, how do you make this happen? How do I even start?

So with this episode, I hope that it’s really valuable and you can have actionable steps that you can take in order to also be working with hotels. And if you’re not in travel, with aligned brands that share the same values.

The Travel Influencer Handbook

I want to give a shout out to Alicia. She is one of my sincere followers who had this episode requests. She also had a few questions about The Travel Influencer Handbook and what was included.

If you have any questions at all, I say this all the time, my DMs are always open and I mean it.

In The Travel Influencer Handbook, I focus a lot on the business side of being an influencer. That’s basically what this episode and my podcast is all about: the business side of creativity, of being online, of building your brand.

It’s always going to be seen as your own business, and that’s really the mindset that we have to adopt. It’s not a hobby. It’s not like something you do occasionally. It’s something that’s yours, it’s your personal brand.

You basically have to live it, breathe it every single day and really put your intentions and values in. So I want you to think of the platform you’re building as a magazine, not just Instagram, it’s like your platform online on every single medium that you have an account for.

This can look like a website. It can look like a podcast, a blog, your TikTok, your LinkedIn, who you are and what your mission is, what your values are. It has to be consistent across all the platforms.

And it can’t just be on Instagram. It’s basically like having a magazine that is only in print and is only available at like grocery stores.

The less people see you, the less relevant you are, so you really want to be omnipresent on every single one of your platforms as an influencer.

Content Creation For Your Audience

The other mindset shift that I really want to bring to your attention is when you are creating content, it has to be for your audience. And it has to be sustainable, even if you’re not working with hotels, with brands or anything that you’re getting paid for.

If you think about a magazine, like if a magazine only operated on sponsorships and advertisements, people probably wouldn’t buy it, right?

Like if there’s just so many advertisements and no content, same thing with your social media pages.

Share things that will attract an audience to you and that will get you, give you the opportunity to really sell yourself and your engaged audience to hotels.

Additionally, if you post every day to the same audience, without focusing on the marketing and advertising side behind it, then your audience is going to grow slowly. You’re going to be creating a lot of time consuming content without the maximum benefit and the reach.

Thirdly, you really want to be focusing on creating new content across all platforms, not just on Instagram. So this looks like new blog posts, new podcast episodes consistently, so that you, our audience will constantly have something to look forward to.

What Is Your Value Proposal?

The thinking behind growing your following and having a large audience on all of these platforms is when you work with hotels and you work with align brands, they get conversions.

If they’re basically using your platforms as advertisements, then intuitively if you post about whatever it is that you’re recommending, then you should get conversions because you’ve built up this audience who are like, oh my gosh, I totally trust what you have to say, this looks amazing, and I’m going to go check it out and I’m going to purchase, or I’m going to book.

That is always the main goal, and that’s kind of like the business side behind it. So you’re always thinking, what value can I offer this business?

For my jewelry line, we started getting people, wanting to work with us. And it’s really interesting seeing it from the business side of it, because we’re really thinking how can this influencer really help our company and help promote our company while at the same time, getting our pieces and getting compensated for it.

And I just want to make it super clear right now. I say this in The Travel Influencer Handbook, if you don’t have a giant following yet, that is okay. You don’t need at least X amount of followers to start working with brands.

It’s literally just who you connect with on the other side, which is usually just another human being. If you don’t have a giant following yet, then really hone in on your value and what else you can provide the brand, whether that’s photography, whether that’s videography, whether that’s copywriting services, whether that’s content writing services, like there’s so many other ways that you can offer value to a brand without having to just take a photo and promote it.

For example, for ANDA, we pay photographers to create content for us and we do shoots. The photographers don’t necessarily have to have the largest followings. We care mainly about the quality of their work and whether they’re able to deliver on our vision.

So if other people reach out to us as photographers, you don’t need to have like huge followings. And you can say, look, I can shoot here. I have these models. I give this value to you, right? And approach us with a value proposal.

We will consider it because we already have the budget for things like this. And that is a perfect match.

Even if you’re not entirely sure what you can offer at this moment, really get to know who it is that you want to be working with and do your research, see what they’re struggling with and come in with a proposal.

The 4 Steps to Money Flow

I just had and onboarding session with a new client a few days ago. She comes from corporate has no entrepreneurship experience, but knows that this is what she wants to pursue.

And so really simply I explained money flows into your business through these four simple steps.

1. The first is lead generation.
2. The second is nurturing.
3. The third is offering products and services.
4. And the fourth is closing, so exchanging the money for products or services.

If you apply this to your influencer business and your personal brand, you need to be constantly focusing on one of these four steps all the time in order for your brand to grow, be sustainable and monetize so that you can reinvest it into your business with collaboration.

When you’re working with a hotel or a brand, your services really help them with lead generation because it boosts the exposure of their brand so that they can read it even more people.

With that in mind, that is where your value proposition should lie, because you’re like, this is how I can help you reach even more people which will in turn, help you with nurturing, help you sell your products and services and therefore make more money in the end.

If we apply this to our own influencer business, you really need to make sure that you have all of these four steps in order to work with hotels and brands.

On top of that, be focused on all four of them instead of just one. So with lead generation, that’s where all of your systems come in. So that’s where your website, your workflows, your Instagram, your social media, like that’s where you reach more and more people and more and more brands.

Then the more you nurture them, the more you can sell your products and services. So whether that’s products that you have in your shop, or it can be services that you offer the hotels.

Whatever your value proposition is, it should be packaged. You should have a rate card, you should have it ready to go so that when your client comes to you, you’re like, this is exactly what I offer, and this is how much I charge.

Last but not least have your payment gateways ready. So whether you pay through PayPal or Stripe, make it super easy for someone to just book with you, to hire you and to get that money into your business, because that’s how you’re going to get more and more momentum to continue creating, to continue sharing and just growing your brand.

My First Hotel Collaboration

I’m going to give an example of the first hotel collaboration I ever did, which was back in 2017, and then I’m going to give a more recent example to kind of give you a better understanding of how things can change over the years.

Before I do this, I just want to make it super clear that it took a lot of mistakes and trial and error and pitching to brands that never responded to me like a lot went on behind the scenes that I don’t share online to get me to where I am today.

By telling you this, I hope that if you are not getting the response and the feedback that you’re seeing on social media, which is a highlight reel, don’t give up, like, don’t take it personally and think that you’re a failure or you’re any lesser than any other creator.

Because I guarantee you, every creator has gone through the same exact thing you are experiencing. By practice, by really committing and being stubborn, you’re going to see your first big break very soon. I promise.

My first ever hotel collaboration was in Rome, Italy, when I went for, I think it was like three or four nights, and then we went to Malta and then we went to Paris.

I had like maybe 10,000 followers on Instagram. And I really just wanted to try my luck and work with a hotel. So I crafted this message and I made it super clear what I could offer the hotel in exchange for a three or four nights day.

I think it was three and four days, such bad memory, but in exchange for our stay in Rome. And I still use this template until this day, it has always served me because I really focus on what it is I can be delivering them and how much I love their place.

I really look into the hotel, I research it, I really connect with them. And that way I’m able to offer this value. That’s really customized to them. I include this template, this exact pitch template that I still use in The Travel Influencer Handbook.

I sat down and I had the mindset because this was when I was still working in corporate, and I remember when I was applying to my first finance job, I sent out maybe like 50 to a hundred applications heard back from less than 10 of them was invited as super days for maybe three or four of them, and then ended up getting like three offers.

I had the same mentality when I was pitching hotels. I was like, well, if I just send an a hundred emails, someone has to respond, right? Like someone has to need the service that I am offering them. And one of these emails should succeed. And that is what happened.

I sent out so many emails that I think my inbox just like temporarily crashed, but it makes sense because I needed to have as many leads. So this is step one lead generation. I had to have as many leads as possible for that specified like very specific timeframe that I was going to be in Rome.

I sent out the message. I was like, this is what I can offer you. And this is what I’m looking for in exchange. And they were like, great. This sounds amazing. And that’s exactly what we need because we don’t have the budget to hire a photographer right now and all of these other things.

It was like win-win and it’s allowed to be that way, like business should be always win-wins. So really be selling yourself on what exactly it is that you can offer.

When we flew to Rome, we checked in, and it was very professional. I wanted to carry my brand, The Wanderlover, which was still like in its initial stages, I wanted it to be a very reputable brand.

I come from Finance and I know how much branding can affect someone, right? Like affect a business and how your name travels. I wanted to just deliver the best quality content I could possibly offer.

That’s what would go into my portfolio that I still have until this day. So really take your brand seriously from the beginning, like write down what you’re and colors are like, what your values are and what you want people to think of when they hear your name.

I’d say maybe like every hour of the day that we were awake, we were shooting. So every night we photographed every single person that was a staff there. We photographed every single detail in the hotel.

We photographed, even without me in it, it was some of them with me, some of them, without me, some of them I could use on my Instagram, we over-delivered because that was my first collaboration. And I was like, I want this to be amazing. I want them to recommend me. I want them to remember me. I want them to use this on their website.

So after we stay there, we document, we take photos and content I deliver within 14 days and everything is edited. Everything is either we transferred or uploaded to a Google drive.

And this is all stated in the contract that we signed beforehand. So if you want a sample contract, that’s also in The Travel Influencer Handbook, highly, highly, highly recommend, always sending a contract because it holds you accountable. And it has clear definitions of what both parties expectations are.

You deliver, which usually includes posting sharing like a blog post, or a podcast episode, whatever you had in your contract. And after you deliver, they will pay you depending on the company within 14 days, within 30 days, whatever it specifies on your contract.

In the beginning, it was a lot of outreach, like 98% outreach, and maybe 2% of people reach out to me. You will make mistakes and you will work with unaligned brands. You know, people will want to work with you. And you’re like, this actually doesn’t like fit with my feed at all.

But depending on what you’re looking for, whether you’re looking for that exposure or experience, you might take it on, and that is okay. In the beginning, you’re still finding out what your own brand is.

So don’t expect that every brand you work with to be perfectly aligned, because you don’t even know what alignment is.

Give yourself permission to just try new things, to test things out, fail a few times or a lot of times, but ultimately never give up.

My Most Recent Collaboration

Lastly, I want to share an example of a recent collaboration where I kind of took the steering wheel and I knew exactly what I offered.

So I packaged it into a paid proposal and they accepted. They reached out to me and was like, we really align with your messaging. We really want to work with you. How do we do so? And so I crafted up this offer, which essentially was just my rate card but in email form.

I knew exactly what I did in the past, and it looked like a social post, 10 to 15 high quality images, drone shots and any extra videos from this location. I specified one to two locations, everything here delivered within 14 days. I put my price on it and they accepted within 24 hours.

This is also something that has transcended any social media platform, because I’ve had this rate card and I’ve had this package since years ago, since 2018, when I first started, and I just adjusted. I took feedback from my clients.

If they needed more videos or more drone shots or more social exposure, I would change my packages to accommodate them.

But underlying, like all of this, I had the basics set up. I had my payment processing up, so it was so easy to deliver and then get paid for it.

After years and years of doing this, what happens is your reputation grows, your connections, grow your feedback and testimonials grow and more and more people are just going to be reaching out to you with the hotel that we’re going to this week.

I still had the contact from our last hotel stay in Bali years ago, and they knew I was back in Bali. And then this collaboration came up. So you never know someone is going to affect you.

Be nice to everyone deliver the best quality content, even if you think you’re never going to see them again. You still want to be over-delivering because you never know how we can turn into a job or a relationship in the future.

Final Thoughts

I hope this episode was helpful. I hope it really shifted your mindset of how to approach working with hotels.

It’s not just taking pretty photos and that’s it. You’re really building your business out of it. And you want to be carrying yourself in a way that’s professional and that’s receptive to a lot of money coming into your business, all in an aligned way.

If you have any more questions, feel free to DM me.

For any other business tips or templates or brands that pay that you can work with today, check out The Travel Influencer Handbook.

Have an amazing week guys, love you all.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread The Wanderlover mission to those who need a dose of inspiration today, thank you!

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