Caroline Belgrave on the Renaissance of Travel + Social Media

Travel insights from Taylor Coulson, associate editor of The Compass

Taylor Coulson Published September 14, 2021

After a year like 2020, you have to — and sometimes hesitate to — ask: What’s next in the world of travel?

Caroline Belgrave of Nexion Travel Group had the answer long before the start of the reawakening of travel that we’re currently experiencing firsthand.

Meet Caroline

On paper, Belgrave is the travel business development and education manager for Nexion Travel Group, a host agency with operations in the United States and across the globe as part of the Internova Travel Group. But her knowledge, expertise and passion cannot be fully demonstrated in just her title. Belgrave helps more than 5,000 travel advisors in North America navigate the Nexion tools and processes to help them achieve peak effectiveness in the travel businesses they are building for themselves. She leads the business development and education team on education for their largest annual event, CoNexion. She is on their team for the Social Pro Award and the Mentor Award and lends her expert advice and voice to training on social media, romance travel, diversity and inclusion at ongoing events. And she’s fully certified through The Travel Institute; she’s earned her Certified Travel Associate, Certified Travel Counselor and Certified Travel Industry Executive certifications.

With over 18 years of experience in the travel, hospitality and marketing industries, she is the travel mentor and business spirit guide to agency owners and independent contractors that every travel professional can learn from. In fact, in 2017, she won the Pax Global Media Social Media Guru of the Year Award by working in her top five social media platforms and sharing her love digitally with her travel community. Here is how she got there and how you can, too, with a little help from social media.

See? How can you understand all of that from her title alone?

How she got here

According to Belgrave, the universe was always sending her signs that she should be working in travel. One of the most memorable signs for her was a road trip to Seattle where the conversation quickly turned to traveling the world. “I said we should go, and six months later after planning and selling my car, I was off backpacking around the world with my good friends,” Belgrave says. “It’s a familiar story for many travel advisors. We start out planning and finessing the travel itineraries for friends, family or office associates, and that leads to the epiphany one day of ‘Wow! I really love planning this stuff!’”

Before Belgrave first stepped into the travel industry, she spent a lot of time analyzing human behavior and needs by working in market research. Belgrave brought that experience with her as an independent contractor in the travel industry. “The first travel agency I worked for literally threw me into the marketing deep end. They didn’t have the marketing supports that Nexion members do to nurture and grow their business. I had to take a guerrilla marketing approach, which was challenging for me as an introvert putting myself out there in unconventional ways.”

The result of putting herself out there in unconventional ways led to spots in trade publications and wedding magazines and led her to create amazing connections within the travel industry and increased visibility with her target audience. All while simultaneously learning the travel industry, Belgrave was taking in everything she could about the digital space, which was very different 15 years ago. She says, “Imagine, in 2021 there are 1.96 billion apps in the Apple Store and 2.87 in the Google Play Store, so not so easy to master them all!” The top five platforms that she uses to stay current and for communicating with her tribe and training are Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest.

Your time is now

“We’re in the renaissance of travel and this is the perfect time for travel advisors to leverage the social media space,” says Belgrave. She says there is so much confusion around how to travel and where to go combined with incredible pent-up demand to get out there. And she adds that “this is the time for travel advisors to showcase themselves as the subject matter experts and answer those questions for eager travelers.” While social media often has the appeal of being inexpensive, it’s one of the mistakes Belgrave says she sees over and over again with travel advisors. “The secret sauce is how you deliver those answers to the public. Answer the questions (how, when, where) and highlight destinations. The possibilities are endless — I say get creative!”

There are so many ways to stay top of mind with existing clients that also bring awareness to new potential clients through social media. With so many ways to use the tools of social media, travel advisors should use a medium (text, audio, photography, video) that best works for their style and brand. Don’t try to do it all.

Belgrave says the path to success with social media is “researching how your buyer personas (meaning the traits and characteristics your typical client has) use social media and which platforms they are spending their time on. An alternative strategy is to be on platforms that are on trend and creating a presence to draw potential clients to you and your business.” TikTok, with its short-form videos, was the fastest growing platform in 2020 and early adopters from the travel sector are seeing great success. It beat out social media giant Facebook for the most downloads, and although it’s demographic is statistically Generation Z, there is potential to reach other audiences. Another hot spot is YouTube, owned by search engine giant Google and the go-to spot for people to get answers to every ”how” question in the universe. With 2 billion monthly users and hundreds of hours of video consumed per minute, now is the time for advisors to tell their travel stories.

Short-form videos on a variety of platforms are seeing the largest reach and higher levels of engagement than other types of content shared, such as static images or text-based posts. In response to TikTok’s short-form videos, YouTube also introduced YouTube Shorts and Instagram introduced Instagram Reels. If you don’t like the idea of video, then the audio-based and invitation-only platform Clubhouse is the place to be heard. Facebook is still a powerhouse and continues to rise to the challenge put forth by other platforms with new features and functions.

If you haven’t guessed it, “social media” and “now” are the answers to how and when is the best time for travel advisors is to rebuild their businesses. After all, we’re in the renaissance of travel and social media, and it’s important to be prepared with the tools to succeed moving forward in the worlds of both.

Follow Caroline on Instagram at @carolinebelgrave or connect with her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/carolinebelgrave. Find her digital and social media training on Instagram at @digital_training_collective.

Caroline’s 6 strategies for success

Stick to a few of your favorite apps and platforms to master.
Be true to yourself: Your content should speak to how you see the world with your travel focus and passion. This includes using photos and videos of you wherever you can to be as authentic as possible.
Create a process to capture leads. Social media is a tool that you use to drive potential clients into a space where you can nurture the relationships such as into a CRM.
Talk to people — engagement, engagement, engagement. Ask people questions on social platforms, respond to comments with more than a “Thank you for liking my post.”. The level of engagement you have with your followers on ANY platform is going to impact the algorithm in a positive way for you.
Analyze your results. If it’s broken, absolutely fix it! If what you’re posting, when you’re posting and where you’re posting aren’t working, change it. Belgrave doesn’t recommend changing the what, when and where all at once, but change one thing at a time to see if that impacts your results, i.e., change the “what” first. Instead of posting pictures, test posting videos. Same thing with “when.” If you normally post in the morning or once a week, try posting in the afternoon or evening. Change something, watch it for a few weeks then reevaluate.
Pick an individual or agency that understands your business and brand. There is no shame in outsourcing your social media management.