Social Travel Survey: Instagram, Snapchat Users Likely to See Influence

Social media is having a huge impact on a variety of industries. But since so many people use social media to document their travels and adventures, it has the ability to have a particularly large impact on the travel industry. According to Emoderation, platforms like Instagram and Snapchat can have a particularly big impact on travelers and their social media followers. So how many people use social media to document their travels? And how many social media users let those posts impact their travel decisions? We asked 1,000 respondents on August 12-13 about their travel habits and what they think about the impact of social travel.

Social Media Use

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 43% of respondents said that they currently use multiple social media sites or apps. 31% use one. And 26% said they don’t use any. Facebook was the most popular, with 92% of social media users saying they have an account. 48% use Twitter. 32% use Instagram. 28% use Google+. 22% use LinkedIn. 14% use Snapchat. And 10% use other social media platforms like Pinterest or Tumblr. Of those who use at least one social media platform, 88% of respondents said they follow their family and friends on social media. 37% follow businesses. 33% follow celebrities. 29% follow news sites. 26% follow bloggers or influencers. And 6% follow other types of accounts on social media, such as sports teams and magazines.

Social Media Impact

Overall, 16% of respondents said that they often see posts related to travel or vacationing on social media. 45% see travel related social media posts sometimes. 21% said they rarely ever see such posts on social media. And 18% said they never do. 64% of those who have seen travel posts on social media said that those posts make them want to travel more in general. 64% also said that seeing posts about a specific destination can make them want to travel to that destination. And 53% said that social media posts can impact their opinions about specific travel brands. Instagram and Snapchat users were even more likely say that their opinions on travel destinations and brands can be impacted by social media.

Social Travel

On the other side, 45% of social media users said that they last posted on social media within the past day. 24% have posted in the past week. 12% have posted in the past month. 7% have posted in the past three months. 3% have posted in the past year. Just 2% said that it’s been more than a year since they last posted on social media. And 7% of social media users said they never actually make their own posts. Of those who have posted on social media, 11% said that they regularly post about their own travel or vacations. 19% have posted about travel on social media many times. 29% have done so once or twice. And 42% said they’ve never posted about travel on social media.

Key Takeaways

Many social media users do seem to agree that posts about travel can impact their opinions and potentially their travel plans. But it’s not necessarily the posts from travel brands or big celebrities or influencers that can have the biggest impact. Many more social media users follow their family and friends on those platforms, meaning that posts from regular people can potentially reach more social media users in an effective way than a carefully planned campaign. Things like hashtag campaigns or social media contests could potentially encourage even more social media users to post about travel brands or destinations. And those posts could have an impact on even more travelers going forward. In addition, it does seem like Instagram and Snapchat have the potential to make even more of an impact on travelers than more established sites like Facebook. So it could be beneficial for travel brands and marketers to include those platforms in any future contests or campaigns. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Travel by Moyan Brenn under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on August 12-13 via AYTM’s online survey panel.