Travel's Creator Economy Resets for Next Boom

When Covid hit, travel's broad cross-section of content creators — bloggers on free or paid press trips, social media influencers, and multimedia storytellers — saw their revenues plummet overnight. Some scrambled to redefine their business models with a focus on local travel, while others shifted into lifestyle, fashion, food, self-help and home decor, or exited travel content creation altogether. As tourism gradually reopens after over a year of stops and starts, is the future as bright or will it remain laced with uncertainty on the other side of this pandemic? Content creation overall, outside of pure news, is at an all-time high particularly in the U.S., and booming in other sectors — but what about in travel? Janicke Hansen and Lola Akerstrom, co-founders of NordicTB Collective — a group of digital storytellers based in Scandinavia — believe in the future of opportunities for local and regional travel content work, but are hesitant on how soon a boom might happen. Hansen said smaller tourism boards in Norway, for instance, had gone bankrupt from the lack of small business tourism revenue and therefore marketing funds remained scarce. The shift of travel influencers into lifestyle and other areas and their desire to now get back into travel — which creators came to realize was a luxury — will also have consequences, Akerstrom added. “It’s going to affect the creator economy in the next two to three years, in that it may devalue what people produce for the destinations, because travel influencers that are really hit are going to be doing a lot of things for free such as press trips,” Akerstrom said. “It’s going to take us back to many years when we said influencers need to be paid for their time.” Ross Borden, the founder and CEO of Matador Network, a veteran travel content creation platform and hub, is more bullish on the future. “I think creators are going to have more opportunities than ever, I think the overall pool of dollars that’s gonna get spent on creators and influencers is going to increase,” Borden said. “We're already at 130 percent of total 2019 revenue, and about 150 percent of total 2020 revenue, and it's almost the end of May, so we're in the middle of what's going to be a huge record year for us.” Borden recently relaunched Matador Creators — a revamped platform or “LinkedIn for travel creators” as Borden described it, where creators can set up their profiles and apply for press trip