We often get asked what it means to be a luxury travel influencer, and how it's possible to become one. The Critics Guide grew very organically into the success it is today, and to celebrate that success we have been exploring the key components of what makes for a good luxury travel influencer.
On a very granular level, the key to being a luxury travel influencer is just that: having influence. It's not enough just to have thousands of social media followers or thousands of email subscribers; you have to be actively engaged within the communities you're talking to. They need to be listening to you.
The Critics Guide's social media channels have grown significantly within the past few years. We are now engaging actively with nearly 30k Instagram followers, and nearly 80k Twitter followers.
As a travel brand, our followers are hugely important in contributing to our travel plans. We engage our followers to influence us, just as much as we influence them. We do this by encouraging recommendations of things to do in the places we are visiting, or ideas of where we should travel next.
"To really engage and influence your audience, you have to really know your audience"
This engagement has helped us to build a community of people who are equally as interested in luxury travel as we are. In reality, we do very little to develop these communities other than provide a platform where they can talk and express their ideas and interests in luxury travel – but we monitor this closely to understand our audience and how we can improve and deliver interesting content.
There's a certain level of responsibility that comes with being a luxury travel influencer, as 'luxury' is a very subjective concept. What we find to be luxurious might be someone else's mediocre. For instance, where one person might find silver service at a restaurant somewhat stuffy and outdated, others might deem it as traditional and imperative to providing classic, first-class service.
That's why to be a luxury travel influencer; you have to have really experienced luxury travel. To gain credibility, you need to have a clear benchmark as to what real luxury is on a global level. Luxury travel standards vary greatly from continent to continent, and it's most important that anyone who wants to be held as an influencer of luxury travel has the travel background to back up their opinions.
Of course having an opinion is a key part of sharing experiences, however those opinions have to be both well informed and also presented as opinions as opposed to fact. Influencing does not involve preaching.
To really engage and influence your audience, you have to really know your audience. Over the past few years The Critics Guide has diversified from reviews on just luxury travel to reviews of luxury lifestyle products across a variety of categories, from technology to transport. We listened to the kind of products our audience show interest in order to give them further interesting content and honest reviews they can trust. This has allowed us not only to keep our existing readers more engaged, but also to reach out to a whole new audience.
With all of this in mind, we believe that being a luxury travel influencer really comes down to these simple things: having credibility and really knowing your audience.