Social Media Influencers Sync With Startup Tools to Sell Travel


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This reporter managed to include Kourtney Kardashian's Insta in this story about travel tech. #winning #socialmedia #thinkfluencer

Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms still haven’t perfected the transactional tools to make it easy to buy the trips that social media influencers show off online. But a few startups, such as TrovaTrip, Luxury Travel Hackers, and Thatch, are focusing on the e-commerce challenge — and this summer have received investor backing. The startups aren't targeting celebrities at the level of, say, Kourtney Kardashian — an influencer who has 140 million followers looking at her August trip to Italy. Instead, they are working with lower-level online personalities. "A lot of our most successful trip hosts have fan bases that remain small enough to be manageable for them to engage with their audience by replying to comments," said Lauren Schneider, a co-founder of trip management platform TrovaTrip.

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A case in point: Ally Coucke, a Denver, Colorado-based creator, entrepreneur, and trav