A YouTubevlog shows a group of twentysomething women on a food tour of Mykonos, Greece. They eat sugar-coated kourabiedes cookies, take shots of ouzo, walk the narrow streets ducking into eateries, and share laughs over a charcuterie board. But this is not your average girls trip.
The women in the video paid to travel to Greece with their favorite YouTuber, Maddie Dragsbaek. Dragsbaek postedthe video,titled "I traveled to Italy and Greece with 40 of my subscribers." She's one of a growing number of creators who have made traveling with their audiences into a lucrative endeavor of its own.
While you once might have enviously watched an influencer's vlog or swiped through photos of her sponsored trip and then jealously planned your own (which would never quite compare), now you can pay for a trip together. The experience lives both on her feed and yours, and in your memories.
SEE ALSO:Instagram took away a major source of income for its creators, and they're not happy about itDragsbaek's trip is one of 500 creator-led trips operated by travel company Trova Trip this year — nearly 200 more than in 2022. Founded in 2017 by Lauren Schneider, Trova Trip is a three-sided marketplace that helps connect creators with travel operators in more than 40 countries. Creators, called hosts by Trova Trip, sell trips to their audiences through the platform for an average of $2,000 to $4,000, though the prices go up to $12,000 for an Antartica trip, airfare not included.
To host a travel experience through Trova Trip, a creator first sends out a survey to their audience. They are eligible to host a trip if their community demonstrates interest — for Trova Trip, that means at least 50 responses from adults with budgets of over $2,000 for the experience. Currently, Trova Trip is the only company specializing in creator-led travel, although more traditional creator-led travel, like yoga retreats, have existed for a while, and some creators have planned one-off trips via other companies. "[Based on the survey results] our platform provides recommendations of itineraries that match their audience interests. We have a wide range of experiences, from backpacking in Patagonia to practicing yoga in Bali to eating food in Japan," explained Schneider.
Once the creator picks an itinerary, their request must be approved by the local operator of the trip. Then Trova Trip provides the operating cost, and the creator sets the price and sells it to their audience.
The trips range in price depending on location, with the final price set by the creator. "We trust our creators to decide their earnings based on what they believe is best for them and their community," Lauren Schneider, the founder of Trova Trip, explained to Mashable. "On average, they're taking about 20 percent of the total trip price." 60 percent goes to the trip operators, and Trova Trip takes the remaining cut.
According to Trova Trip, around 700 creators have hosted trips so far. Hosts have spanned from Love Is Blind's Kwame and Chelsea to Cassie and Danielle of the National Park After Dark podcast (they're the ones going to Antarctica). Hosts have access to 150+ itineraries. And the hosts are just that; the trip operators provide tour guides and manage on-the-ground logistics.
When Trova Trip reached out to Dragsbaek to gauge her interest in hosting a trip for her 233,000 subscribers, saying yes was a no-brainer, Dragsbaek told Mashable. "It's such a strange and unique opportunity that I had to do it," she continued. "Not only was I getting to meet the people that support my content face to face, but I was able to meet them in a meaningful way by spending a good amount of time traveling together."
Dragsbaek's 7-day Greece trip cost a whopping $3,350. The price included a double room with another trip attendee, six breakfasts, two dinners, shuttle service to and from Athens airport, transport to and from Mykonos, and planned activities like a visit to the Parthenon. It did not include attendees' air fare.
Despite the steep price, Dragsbaek's fans were eager to attend.
In 2020, during a spell of quarantine-induced boredom, Amanda Layne Miller turned to YouTube. An outfit video from Dragsbaek popped up on her homepage and she clicked. "Literally the algorithm just fed it to me," Miller told Mashable. "I started binging literally every single one of her videos. I felt like I had a lot in common with her."
Miller found Dragsbaek authentic, conversational, and funny. "The way that she speaks is so personal that I got to know her through her opinions and what she loves," she explained.
So when Miller caught wind that Dragsbaek was hosting a trip to Greece in June 2023 for up to 20 of her subscribers, Miller jumped at the opportunity. "I thought, I've always wanted to go to Greece. It's with one of my favorite YouTubers. I think we'd get along, and I want to be friends with her. I can't not do this," she said.
Similarly, several years ago Cari Cakes, an American creator living in Seoul, was recommended on YouTube to Katie Giordano, a 25-year-old media worker in Hong Kong. Giordano became a fan of both Cakes's travel content and book tube. "Her whole demeanor is so relaxing. I don't know if that's weird, but she's just very calm and realistic," Giordano explained to Mashable. This past May, Giordano went on Cakes's trip to Tokyo. "Everybody was a little bit like Cari in a certain way," she said. "They were all really nice, accepting, and eager and open-minded. Cari attracts niceness, because that is her own aura."
These trips seem like a recipe for an Ingrid Goes Westsituation — a group of people all hoping to become friends with someone they feel like they already know from watching them online for years. But for Dragsbaek, the unique relationship broke down walls between attendees and her. "It's hard to even describe when you're talking to someone, and [they're] a stranger, but you immediately feel understood by them. And it's because they already know so much about you," she explained.
While there is the possibility for immediate connection between creator and traveler, creators, who lead and profit from the trip with their followers, could easily act as though they are above the travelers. Followers, who have watched these creators often for years, may fall into overt fan-girling.
Morgan Yates, a 28-year-old lifestyle YouTuber in Los Angeles, California, who has hosted three trips — two through Trova Trip — dealt with overzealous travelers. One made it clear she knew basically every detail of Yates's life. Others were "clingy." "It becomes a difficult situation because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by trying to get away from them, but at times I've felt a bit conflicted and frustrated when those people are only making an effort to spend time with me and not get to know everyone else," she told Mashable.
There are some safety mechanisms in place to help keep overtly dangerous fans off trips. "Hosts have the ability to review or reject a traveler, they control how and who the trip is marketed to, so they could list it in the marketplace or they can only send it to vetted folks," said Amy Dunn, communications lead at Trova Trip.
The first trip Yates hosted was through Contiki, a tour company she'd previously been a traveler with, and due to their privacy policy, Yates wasn't allowed to access any info on the travelers on her trip ahead of time which made her "super nervous," despite it ending up being a "great group."
Despite going on these trips to meet their favorite creator, travelers are expected to behave as travelers might on any group trip. But this can be a challenge.
"It's easier to develop a parasocial relationship with a YouTuber, because their art is literally just them," said Miller. She acknowledged the potential for weird behavior and for travelers to overwhelm Dragsbaek because everyone wanted to develop a connection with her. "I was excited to get to know her as a person and actually have a relationship with her further than just audience and subject."
SEE ALSO:What are parasocial relationships?You might imagine that as soon as Dragsbaek left the room, all the travelers would immediately begin discussing her and comparing her to her videos. But it wasn't quite like that.The travelers all being huge fans of Dragsbaek was "the elephant in the room" until the middle of the week, said Miller. "Someone finally said, 'I feel like, we all came here to like become friends with Maddie to a certain extent."
When Giordano arrived in Tokyo and met Cakes, she felt like she was meeting a celebrity. "When I first met her, I said, 'You look like a woodland fairy.' She's got the beautiful red hair. She's literally so gorgeous," said Giordano. "The first few days I was like, 'Oh my gosh, she's so cool.' But it toned down throughout the trip."
While Giordano was struck by Cakes's real-life beauty — and by how slow Cakes talks, because Giordano watches YouTube at double speed — the person she met was exactly how she thought she would be. "I got a good idea of how she was as a person, because she's very open and honest on her YouTube channel," explained Giordano.
Travelers' expectations aren't just something they have to manage. The creators are hyper-aware of whether or not they are living up to the persona in their content. Jade Fox, a 32-year-old lifestyle creator YouTuber in Los Angeles, California, worried about her ability to meet expectations ahead of the trip she hosted to Bali with her best friend and fellow creator Arrowsthis summer. "I'm used to the process of capturing myself exactly the way I want to. People are used to seeing a very curated, edited version of me," Fox told Mashable. "I was nervous about disappointing folks."
Yates faces similar anxieties on her trips. "I almost have imposter syndrome going into these trips. I know I'm not any cooler or more special than anyone else there. My fear is always that I'm not living up to what people expected me to be like," she explained.
All the hours of anecdotes Miller and Giordano watched led them to fly across the world to meet their favorite YouTubers, which can make for a lot of pressure. But creators have the capacity to create a community that reflects the content they've put out there, and that can lead to incredibly meaningful trips.
"I was nervous if that [connection between creator and audience] was going to exist in real life, as it does in the comment section.When we met in personit was almost as if we had all already known each other for years," said Fox. "I'm a Black queer woman. Arrows is a transmasculine, nonbinary queer person, and our audience is just different iterations of that."
The group's shared identities provided a touch point for connection. "We are a giant pack of Black people; some of us are gender-fluid. And we're going into a city where we don't know how we're going to be perceived, we don't know what's going to happen. A lot of us had never been out of the country before," explained Fox. "That was another way that we were all able to protect each other, because we all know what violence looks like toward people who have experiences like ours."
Fox described the trip as "spiritual," "a fully immersive experience," and "kismet." By the end, travelers were getting tattoos to commemorate the experience and changing their flights home to spend more time with each other. The most magical moment for Fox came on their chill day by the pool when one of the travelers taught her how to swim. "It was this big Disney Channel moment. When I finished my first full lap, I lifted my head out of the water and everyone was just screaming and going crazy," reminisced Fox.
Miller also felt moved by the end of Dragsbaek's trip. "The last night is when we're all like, 'We know each other really well' and wishing it was the first day. It felt like summer camp," said Miller. "I was like, 'Whoa, like, I'm an adult. And I have not been in this type of environment since high school.'"
For creators with a smaller audience who might not be sought after for brand sponsorships, a Trova Trip venture can provide more money than a brand sponsorship. So, while Fox and Dragsbaek created meaningful connections with their audiences, there's the potential from others to treat the travel game like a full-time hustle.
Lindsay Mukkadam, a 37-year-old based in Austin, Texas, who posts under the moniker "One Girl Wandering," pivoted from being a solo travel creator to making her business about encouraging her audience to get out and travel by coming on one of her trips. Her Instagram bio labels her as "Your solo travel bff! Stop waiting for others and finally book the trip of your dreams," and in this year alone, she's hosted trips to Costa Rica, Iceland, Scotland, two to Japan, and two to the Amalfi Coast. By the end of the year she'll host two trips to Egypt, and two to Christmas markets in Germany and Austria. A slew of her 2024 trips are already being promoted.
Others, like Danah Clipa, @danahbananaa on TikTok, refuse to, as they see it, take advantage of their followers by making them pay to join them on travel adventures. In a since-deleted video, Clipa explained that she canceled her Trova Trip because it would be free for her at the expense of her followers. "If I'm inviting someone to travel out of the country with me," said Clipa, "I want them to feel on the same level as me, because we are — we are the exact fucking same."
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