How to find creators for your hotel (the right way)

To find creators for your hotel, define the exact content you need, look for them on a matching platform that has already verified them, and check three things before you say yes: real followers, real engagement, and a genuine travel niche. Doing it that way, in roughly an afternoon, you avoid the two traps that cost hoteliers the most: fake accounts and content that never shows up. Here is the full process, step by step.

Step 1: Define the content you actually need

Before you look for a single creator, write down what you want out of the collaboration. A creator who knows the brief delivers, a creator who has to guess does not.

Decide the format first. Reels for reach, a carousel of photos for your own feed and your website, Stories for an instant booking push, UGC you can reuse in your ads. Most hotels need two or three Reels plus a set of photos they can use everywhere.

Then decide the angle. The pool by sunset, breakfast on the terrace, the walk to the beach, the suite reveal. The more specific the brief, the closer the result is to what you imagined, and the less back and forth you spend later.

Step 2: Where to find verified creators

The best place to find creators for a hotel is a matching platform that has already verified them, not your Instagram DMs. Searching hashtags and messaging accounts one by one is slow, and it puts the entire burden of vetting on you.

There are three common routes. Open DMs, where you message creators yourself and hope they are real and that they reply. Agencies, where someone manages the relationship for a fee and a markup, expensive and slow for a small hotel. Or a matching platform, where verified creators come to you based on your destination and your dates.

The platform route wins on time and on safety. You skip the cold outreach, you skip the guesswork on who is fake, and you talk only to people who already match what you offer.

Step 3: How to vet a creator in five minutes

Vetting comes down to three signals: real followers, real engagement, and a real travel niche. Check all three and you filter out almost every bad collaboration before it starts.

Real followers. Look at the follower-to-engagement ratio and the comments. A bought audience shows up as high follower counts with dead comments, generic one-word replies, and emoji from accounts that never post. Real audiences ask questions and tag friends.

Real engagement. A healthy travel creator usually sits around 2 to 5 percent engagement. Do not chase the biggest number. A micro creator with 25,000 engaged followers beats a macro with 300,000 hollow ones almost every time.

Real travel niche. Their last 12 posts should look like travel, hotels, food, and destinations, not a random mix. An audience that follows them for travel is an audience that books trips, and that is the audience you want seeing your property.

Step 4: How matching and Open Stays work

Matching flips the search around: instead of you hunting creators, you publish your availability and verified creators apply to it. On easyInfluencer this availability is called an Open Stay.

You open a stay for specific dates, the verified creators who fit your destination see it and apply, and you pick the one whose audience and style match your property. No cold outreach, no negotiating from zero, no wondering whether the account is real, because the verification already happened.

The model is barter. You give a stay, the creator gives content, and no cash changes hands with the creator. Your real cost is the operating cost of a room that would often have sat empty, roughly 50 euros a night, against a Reel whose equivalent media value can run 200 to 400 euros. Compare that to OTA commissions of 15 to 25 percent on every booking and the math speaks for itself.

Step 5: Avoiding fakes and no-shows

The two real risks are fake creators and content that never arrives, and structure beats both. Promises in a DM protect no one.

Against fakes, insist on verification before any agreement, exactly the followers, engagement, and niche checks above. Against no-shows, agree in writing on what gets delivered, how many Reels and photos and by when, and use a system that confirms the content actually went live instead of you chasing screenshots.

When verification happens up front and delivery is confirmed automatically, the collaboration stops being a gamble and becomes a predictable channel you can run again and again.

Doing all of this with easyInfluencer

easyInfluencer is a matching platform that connects Greek hotels with verified travel creators on the barter model. Every creator is vetted before they reach you, so the followers, engagement, and niche checks are already done.

You open an Open Stay, the verified creators who fit your destination apply, and you pick the one you want. You give a stay and get content, no cash changes hands with the creator, and delivery is confirmed automatically so you never chase anyone. You pay only a fixed monthly subscription for access, no commission on bookings: 29 euros a month on Starter, 49 on Professional.

Your first match is free, so you can see it work before you pay anything. And until 21 June 2026, the first hoteliers lock in the Founding price of 19 euros a month for 24 months.