Find quality travel creators in 2 places

Rio Secreto Mexico cave cenote ducking through an opening Sheila Scarborough Tourism Currents with travel creators at TBEX 2014
Ducking through a Río Secreto cave cenote from when I was a speaker at the TBEX 2014 online travel media conference, held that year in Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

Do you want to connect with travel creators, bloggers, influencers, or whatever the name is this month?

A lot of destinations, attractions, hotels, and tourism partner businesses are interested in collaborating with travel content creators on marketing campaigns, but aren’t sure how to find quality people who are a good fit (very important) for reaching their ideal visitors, guests, or customers.

Or, they may simply want to learn more in general about “who’s who” in the online travel media landscape, for when they DO have budget for such projects.

Sure, there are agencies that will find travel media people and make connections, for a fee. There are companies you may already work with that do that, too, like the CrowdRiff Creators program.

If you are willing to do a little digging, though, here is another way to find travel creators who already have a bit of independent vetting and legitimacy: people who have won awards at travel media conferences, and those who have been chosen to be speakers at those conferences.

Finding Those Who’ve Won Travel Creator Awards

You start with the main travel media organizations and their conferences.

Not sure what those are?

—->> Go to our blog post about conferences where you can connect with travel bloggers, influencers, and creators.

Every major online travel media conference gives out awards, for a huge variety of media types, including websites, video, blogs, photography, and social media. A panel of judges reviews the entrants, so it’s a good start on a quality cut.

Don’t just look at the most recent awardees; make notes on interesting prospects going back at least a few years.

I’ve grouped together some starting points below. Don’t forget to look for creators from outside of your home country if you want international coverage:

If an awards website page or press release lists all the nominees for an award category, that can help you find good creators, too.

Finding Travel Media Conference Speakers

As a speaker myself, including at travel creator events because I’ve been a travel writer and blogger since 2006, I know that most events are rightfully picky about who they select to speak. That means that someone has done some digging for you.

An expert is not necessarily also a great speaker who can teach and motivate a crowd, but we’ll leave that problem for another day!

You also have to wade through a lot of worthy conference speakers and panelists who are not creators – tourism folks, agency reps, local government officials, etc.

Related blog post – Influencers for destination marketing: 5 things to consider

Finding speaker lists is a little tricky, I’ve found, because many conferences don’t keep all the website information up from past events.

If they are in between events – just finished this year’s, took down the speaker info, and haven’t put together all of next year’s program – you’ll have to make a calendar reminder to check closer to the next event, or sign up for their emails to get speaker announcements.

Fortunately, two conferences, TBEX and WITS, do maintain previous conference speaker lists:

Between award-winning travel creators and those who have enough expertise and experience to be speakers, you should be able to find those who can help you tell your stories in the most imaginative, effective ways.

Let me know in the comments what you think about finding travel creators to work with.

 

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