• Look, we'll keep this one pretty short. The great thing about travel is everyone loves it, everyone loves to look at places they haven't been that they want to go, everyone wants to think about getting away. It's really inspirational, it's entertaining, it's fun to look at, gets great engagement, the really difficult part is there's no money in it. That might change but you have to understand the way that hotels and airlines operate. First of all, airlines make no money essentially, the margins to say that an airline's margins are razor-thin is probably an understatement.

    I heard a fact once a couple years ago said that most airlines make eight cents per ticket, that's what they make. Flying your ass from New York to San Francisco, they make eight cents on that flight. Then you ask, "Oh my gosh. Why don't I have better food? Why are they treating me like cattle?" The price of an airline ticket is so low, it's truly shocking that you can fly across the country for $300. They are, again, essentially making no money on that. Airlines don't have the massive advertising budgets that-- Well, let's look at fragrance. If on a $200 ticket an airline makes 8 cents, on a $200 bottle of perfume, that brand probably makes $185.

    Who do you think has more money to advertise? The fragrance, right? This is why beauty companies vastly outspend fashion companies in this space because the margins are shockingly good so they have so much money to spend on advertising. Airlines don't, hotels don't. These things have become commoditized and as they became commoditized, the biggest factor in driving bookings and sales is price. They're all competing on price and so they just can't play around with advertising and money in the same way. It's going to be really hard as a travel influencer to make money because there's just not a lot of advertising dollars out there.

    All the advertising dollars that do exist for travel are very, very focused on performance, on bookings. The Four Seasons overall might be spending money to try and build a brand, but the Four Seasons in Boston just wants you to book the hotel. Delta is doing things to try and make you think about it as a different airline but what are they focused on next week? Is making sure that their planes are full. There's just not the same brand-driven advertising spend that exists in other markets because to do that they probably have to double the price of the flight and then we'd all complain about that. It's probably not going to happen and I think being a travel influencer, you may live a pretty cool life, but making the kind of money that beauty influencer makes is I would say will never happen, ever. Too long didn't listen. The biggest pitfall being a travel influencer you're probably never going to make a lot of money.
    Episode #170
    - Inflating View Counts, Agents and Managers, Travel Influencers