As Canadians rethink their travel plans and shift their spending closer to home, hospitality brands have a unique opportunity: attract the domestic traveler who’s looking for adventure without crossing a border.
Last year, we helped a North American hospitality brand tap into that shift. Not just by creating scroll-stopping content, but by turning engagement into trackable action. The result? Over 7 million impressions across Instagram and Facebook, a fully re-engaged community, and the foundation of a repeatable strategy that blends creator content with affiliate performance.
And we didn’t do it by reinventing the wheel. We built on the strengths they already had.
The brand came to us with an impressive following on Instagram. Nearly 80,000 people, but little interaction on posts. Their content wasn’t reaching new users, and their existing audience had gone quiet. What they needed wasn’t a complete overhaul. They needed structure. Strategy. And a way to not just build visibility, but to track what that visibility was worth.
We focused on two things:
This wasn’t just about growth. It was about purposeful growth. We used both organic tactics and paid support to increase exposure, while laying the groundwork for content that would work harder than a single post ever could.
Over an 8-month campaign, here’s what we saw:
Across both platforms, we helped reintroduce the brand to their audience and reach the right kind of new viewers: social media users actively searching for local travel ideas, outdoor experiences, and family-friendly getaways.
If you’re in hospitality, you already know how often creators and influencers reach out looking for a free stay. Maybe you’ve said no, unsure if it’s worth it. Maybe you’ve said yes and never heard from them again post stay. Or maybe you got the content, but couldn’t tell if it did anything for your business.
This is the exact pain point we hear from hotel owners, retreat hosts, and glamping brands across North America. And it’s why we don’t treat creator outreach as a brand play to throw money at. We treat it like a campaign strategy with trackable results.
Here’s what we did differently:
Not all creators are equal. Some have beautiful content but low influence. Others have strong engagement, but an audience that doesn’t align with your business (think: international followers or lifestyle creators who rarely post about travel).
We built a system that filters creators based on:
This helped us avoid low-impact exchanges and focus on people who could actually move the needle.
We didn’t offer a stay and hope for a nice photo. Every creator was briefed, supported, and clear on expectations. Their stay was designed around content capture. Whether it was scenic cabin footage, family-friendly activity shots, or UGC-style videos that showed what it’s really like to stay on the property.
The goal? Content that felt real to their audience. Not overly polished, but also not lazy.
Creators who feel supported create better content. And when they’re matched with the right experience? It shows.
This is where most campaigns stop, but it’s where ours started to shine.
Each creator was given a unique affiliate link or promo code that could be tracked directly back to bookings. This meant that:
No more guessing. No more wondering if that reel led to results. Just clear data tied to real revenue.
Promo codes weren’t just for tracking. They were an incentive for action.
By offering the creator’s audience a small discount, we created a reason to book now, not later. That small friction reducer turned “that place looks cool” into “let’s actually go.”
It also positioned creators as a helpful, trustworthy resource. Not just someone posting pretty pictures. Their audience felt like they were getting insider access, not being sold to.
This strategy wasn’t built around one viral video or a single lucky partnership.
It was designed to be repeatable: a system the brand could roll out each season, with new creators and new campaigns, while improving results every time. It balanced visibility, conversion, and creator relationship-building, giving the brand an engine they could run year after year.
It also respected both sides of the partnership: creators got a valuable experience and the opportunity to earn, and the brand got content, exposure, and revenue.
That’s what makes this model so powerful. It doesn’t rely on hype or hope. It runs on data, value exchange, and smart targeting. Which is exactly what hospitality brands need right now and we see very few doing it well.
One of the most powerful outcomes of this campaign wasn’t just the reach or the rise in engagement. It was the ability to connect content performance directly to business outcomes.
By combining creator content with affiliate links and codes, the brand could track which creators were driving traffic, which audiences were converting, and how those conversions aligned with specific pieces of content. This turned a traditionally hard-to-measure brand awareness tactic into something far more tangible.
Each comped stay became a micro-campaign: a piece of high-quality content, a testable call-to-action, and a revenue opportunity, all rolled into one. Some creators delivered strong top-of-funnel reach, while others converted followers into bookings at a steady clip. The key was being able to see both and to use that data to improve every step of the process.
The real win wasn’t in chasing one viral post or a single weekend of high traffic. It was building a repeatable system where creators became partners in growth, and every collaboration offered both short-term visibility and long-term value.
And that value wasn’t speculative. The affiliate infrastructure allowed us to track how many users redeemed codes, where traffic came from, and how many bookings could be attributed to creator content. That transparency gave the brand a clearer sense of what worked and what to do more of.
Based on performance projections, the full rollout of this model had a revenue potential of over $250,000 across a single high season. A powerful indicator of what’s possible when strategy and systems support the right partnerships.
But even in its pilot phase, this approach validated what many brands suspect and few actually build toward: When creators are set up to succeed, they don’t just generate content. They generate business outcomes.
Canadians are staying closer to home, and their dollars are staying here, too. That’s a huge opportunity for camping, glamping, and hotel brands. Especially those positioned for nature-forward, family-friendly, or unique getaway experiences.
If you can meet travellers where they’re already scrolling and give creators the tools to not just post, but perform, you’re building more than a moment. You’re building a movement.
This campaign showed what’s possible when community-building meets smart strategy. It wasn’t about chasing trends or going viral. It was about:
For hospitality brands across Canada, this isn’t a “nice-to-have.” It’s your next competitive advantage.
We’re booking spring and summer campaigns now. Let’s talk about how this could work for you.
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