Skift Take
When Facebook enabled airlines and hotels to build booking functionality into their Facebook pages years ago, it was a total bust. But Instagram and Whatsapp seem to have an engagement level that was missing last time around, making these e-commerce moves appear to be a lot more feasible.
HotelTonight, Icelandair, Traveling to Portugal, and NYC and Co. were among the travel brands and destinations offering Instagram Stories Wednesday night.
HotelTonight's story, for example, featured one of its marketing managers, Jess K., who cited her favorite hotels to stay at when traveling for work, and noted that it's easy to use various filters in the HotelTonight app to focus on what you're looking for in a hotel.
"Swipe up to customize your search," the HotelTonight story said, and if you did, you would have left Instagram and opened the HotelTonight app to start a hotel search.
Facebook officials disclosed that the social network now has two million Stories' advertisers across its platforms, and this year the company will focus on making their advertisements more relevant and much more transactional.
[Update: A Facebook spokesperson said Thursday "that we didn’t announce anything new specific to t
