You’ve heard about buying ads on Facebook and Instagram and using Google Adwords. You may even be using those online marketing channels to outsmart your old-school competitors. But Pinterest offers another way to pull in leads.

Pinterest is a website that allows users to find ideas by browsing through photos. With billions of pins, you'll always find ideas to spark inspiration. When you discover pins that you love, save them to boards to keep your ideas organized and easy to find. You can also create pins to share your ideas with other people on Pinterest.

It's not just for crafters, DIYers, and brides-to-be - it's the go-to site for those planning trips and looking for travel inspiration. 

In fact, travel is more popular on Pinterest than on other platforms like Facebook & Twitter. That's probably because of the visual experience people are looking for. People want to visit beautiful places and capture it all in photos that they can share with their friends & family. Photos can help people decide where they want to go on their next vacation. 

Pinterest has a great advantage over other social media channels when it comes to the travel industry. It is specifically designed for visual discovery!

Pins about travel and tourism make up nearly 25% of all activity on Pinterest. 
Did you know that out of the top five airliners, booking sites, destinations, hotels, and media brands, as many as 75% are on Pinterest? 

According to Skift, it's the most popular trip-planning site with more travel pins than TripAdvisor has reviews or opinions. 

Plus, with over 175 million active users on Pinterest - mostly women - it's no surprise that this platform is perfect for trip planning!

Themed Boards Allow You to Build Audience by Specific Interests. 
It's not common for any travel company to focus solely on one single customer segment. Most successful brands spread their target audience across multiple personas. This way they can benefit from the diversity of their customer base and are not dependent on any one subgroup. 

Plus, different personas also come with their own individual values, needs, and problem-solving requirements; for example, a 20-year-old college student and her 50-year-old mother likely have radically different concepts of their perfect breakaway. 

However, what truly unifies them is the simple desire to travel and take that dream vacation. That's why Pinterest boards are great tools - you can use them to tailor pins to each persona!

Pinterest is not a social network.
Using Pinterest differs from other social networks in that there is no user-to-user interaction. This means less time invested for your travel company - you don't have to follow other accounts or respond to comments like you do on Facebook or Instagram. 

Pinterest vs. Google and Facebook
"Everyone's always talking about Facebook and Google ads - why should I invest my time and resources into Pinterest?" Using Pinterest for brand building is still relatively new compared to other social media channels. It could be a great fit for some industries, but maybe not work as well for others.

Who benefits from Pinterest?
If you want to use Pinterest for your brand, you need to be perceived as a reliable source of information. Establishing trust with your audience is essential for being successful in sales. 

Two key elements are necessary for leveraging Pinterest: content that provides value and is interesting to read, as well as attractive visuals that accompany the content. 

With these combined and using Pinterest as your primary traffic source, you can build a solid following in just a few short months.

References
Tourism Tiger
BKMedia Group