Of all the social media channels used for discovering new travel destinations Instagram is the most popular and that’s why creating ‘instagrammable moments’ at your Caribbean hotel or resort is so important.
Couple Lauren Bullen of @gypsea_lust and Jack Morris of @doyoutravel are arguably two of the most popular travelgrammers out there and it’s easy to see why. Not only do their images showcase beautiful locations, but more importantly their images showcase exceptional experiences (which explains their avid following of over 4 million fans). Just take a look at their accounts and you’ll see what I mean.
In a recent interview at the Inflow Global Summit, these two shared something that stuck with me:
Interviewer: “I know a story of you in Cappadocia (a region in Turkey) about the breakfast. What you did in Cappadocia changed the whole breakfast service in the region. Can you tell us how that happened?”
Lauren: “We had this whole idea and we loved the rooftop scene, seeing all the (hot air) balloons take off in the morning and we said to the hotel when we got there – ‘hey we want to have breakfast on your roof, can we work that out?’ And they were like, ‘umm I guess so’ so we wanted to lay down some cushions and some rugs and have breakfast there and it would be such an amazing experience. And then we set it all up, got some pictures, and then the photo just went crazy.
My sister was there only a couple of months ago and she was staying at the same hotel and she said that the whole place has changed now. The hotel was telling her that all the hotels do it now – they’ve set their roofs up, they’ve changed everything. Breakfast now isn’t down in the kitchen, it’s up on the roof. Everyone wants that photo and that’s why they’re all coming there. They want to sit on the roof and get their photo and now that’s a thing there. It was really cool to see that one image can really change the entire tourism (industry) in a town like that.”
Jack: “It was really funny when we got up there and wanted to do this breakfast shot there was no table or anything up there like that so we had the staff literally bringing tables from the breakfast area upstairs to the roof. Everyone goes up to the roof to take photos, but not with breakfast and when everyone saw us up there with breakfast they wondered why they couldn’t have breakfast up there too. They were like, ‘breakfast is downstairs; the buffet is downstairs!” But it went off really well and pretty much every single hotel in Cappadocia does it now and they have designated breakfast areas on their rooftops. I don’t think anyone eats breakfast downstairs anymore.”
The image that ‘went crazy’ and changed breakfast service in Cappadocia forever.
Fascinating, right?! It’s easy for those of us who live and work in hotels and resorts on gorgeous Caribbean islands for years and years to become somewhat blind to the beauty and blind to what we consider the norm, but what travelers consider the extraordinary.
How to fix this? Take a moment to really examine your resort. Look for opportunities to host travel influencers and consider their input. Use the geotagging feature on Instagram to see what your guests are taking photos of and sharing on Instagram.
There may be a moment that you never saw but that someone else did that you can turn into a regular ‘instagrammable’ part of your guest experience!
Need help identifying instagramable experiences at your hotel or resort? Get in touch here or at hello@coralrange.com.
Header image by Lauren and Jack in USVI
