With social media on the rise as the go-to for travel discovery and planning, the type of social media content travelers are looking for is increasingly important.
In an era where travel video content in particular is in the spotlight, many are rejecting the more polished content coming from professional influencers — not to mention AI-generated content — in favor of videos that feel more “real.”
Enter user-generated content (UGC). While the concept is nothing new — companies sharing photos and videos created by users of their product (or guests/visitors of their experience) rather than professionally-produced media — UGC is seeing a resurgence. In a recent series of trial marketing campaigns, UGC content platform NaviSavi found that travel-themed UGC got up to nine times more click-throughs than professional videos.
NaviSavi is the brainchild of Sally Bunnell, who over ten years ago started one of the first kids’ YouTube channels featuring videos kids had recorded themselves, after realizing kid-created content was outperforming professional studio content. Fast forward (swipe forward?) to today, her platform has grown to host over 125K user-generated travel videos, and she is branching out to offer tour, activity and attraction operators ways to get involved.
I recently caught up with Bunnell to get her insights on UGC, and hear her thoughts on how tour, activity and attraction operators can leverage user-generated content to get more engagement — and ultimately, more conversions.
How to Leverage User-Generated Content to Increase Engagement, Conversions
1. Be Real
Why is UGC so powerful? Because it’s real. In today’s world of influencer- and AI-generated content, the magic of user-generated content is in its very magic-less nature — it’s created by real people having real experiences.
There’s a pushback against “influencers,” Bunnell observes, especially among younger generations of travelers. “This younger generation is very, very cautious of flashy sales. There’s an app called Be Real for a reason, because they’re tired of all the [stuff] that’s out there that you can’t even tell [if it’s real].”
Rather than paying a premium for influencer-produced content, with which it is notoriously difficult to track metrics like engagement and reach, Bunnell notes “businesses can actually be generating a lot of this content on their own by giving a real perspective of their business.”
And what about AI? “The bubble is popping on flashy stuff, AI,” says Bunnell. “I present at all these conferences and it’s really funny because a lot of the judges say, ‘Are you not worried AI is going to take over video?’ And I say, ‘Not in travel because people want to see the real experience. That’s it.’”
So what makes an experience look “real?”
2. Use First-Person Perspective
Everything has been vertical for a while, but one of the significant changes Bunnell has noticed more recently is the shift away from videos that have a subject walking through and showing the experience, to videos shot from a first-person perspective.
NaviSavi is finding the content that leads to conversions in 2025 is short clips shot from a first-person perspective, like in this compilation which features content from NaviSavi’s UGC library.
First-person perspective is powerful, because it lets the viewer imagine they are there, rather than watching someone else have the experience. UGC content shot from a first-person perspective in particular feels more real, because viewers feel like they can relate to the person who shot the video. “This is how we’re seeing conversions happen and people clicking on content, because that [first-person] content is resonating,” Bunnell shares.
“It’s not so much our old days of ‘I’m an influencer and I’m going to take you to this…” she says. “People are just like, ‘shut up and show me what it looks like so I can move on.’ The attention span is insane.”
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3. Use Your Local Ecosystem to Target the “Friends and Family” Vote
Another reason user-generated content is powerful is because it has the potential to target the “friends and family” vote. Arival research on the experiences traveler shows “friends and family” is still one of the top research channels, second only to Google.
And while friends and family as a channel can be difficult to market to on its own (imagine buying an ad for a family dinner, or sponsoring a wedding?), UGC gets pretty close. “The difference between influencer-led content versus UGC that is getting clickthroughs,” observes Bunnel, is UGC “feels casual and comfortable and your friends and family when they’re posting that you’re more likely to see something from their channels.”
Travel businesses are “saying poo poo to these large influencers and are targeting their past customers to be their best spokespeople,” says Bunnell. “You need to be getting video content from those who took part and enjoyed your experience and highlighting those people,” she continues, and it can be as easy as asking them to tag you in their videos. “Start utilizing your best customers. They’re constantly filming everything they do… they don’t have to be an influencer, but their friends are watching their entire trip.”
4. Get Onboard with the Content Shift
Much of this can be done by operators on their own, Bunnell encourages. However, for those who want to take a more structured approach, NaviSavi is branching into B2B, enabling operators to upload content that can be shared in a variety of places and licensed to use in their own campaigns.
Content uploaded to NaviSavi can also be licensed for use by other brands in marketing campaigns, so that your activity could appear — for example — on an airplane seatback video highlighting things to do in the destination a traveler is flying to, or in an interactive map with bookable links.
And that’s where it really gets interesting — with social media platform usage shifting and online booking becoming more ubiquitous, NaviSavi has reimagined the path to purchase as video-first.
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” says Bunnell. “But a video is worth a f***ing billion.”
Learn More about UGC and NaviSavi with Arival
Join our next Arival Insider Pro Meetup to hear directly from CEO of NaviSavi Sally Bunnell. She’ll share insights on the opportunities for tour, activity and attraction operators working with user-generated content, how to get content that converts, and how NaviSavi is harnessing creator partnerships to amplify experience brands.
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Header photo: Pexels / Kokorevas