How to actually measure influencer ROI for destinations

The four signals that matter

First, branded search lift during and 30 days after the campaign. Second, newsletter signups attributable to the campaign window. Third, post-engagement actions (saved posts, profile visits to the destination's account). Fourth, qualitative brand-tracker shifts on perception attributes the creator addressed.

Reach and likes? Useful as sanity check, not as ROI metric.

The 'right creator' problem

The biggest wins we've seen come from creators with 50-200K followers in a specific niche (ski-touring, family travel, slow travel) over mega-creators with 1M+ followers in 'general travel'. The conversion rate differs by 5-10×.

Trust scales inversely with audience size for travel decisions.

Contracts that hold up

Always include rights for the destination to repurpose creator content in paid media. The earned-then-paid amplification approach usually outperforms either approach on its own — pay creator for content, then pay media to put that content in front of more lookalikes.