Anne-Julie Karcher: Unlocking the potential of social media influencers for hotels

Anne-Julie Karcher

You don’t need to work with tons of influencers. You need to select the one. That the audience is your future customers.

Sebastien Leitner

Hi there. Welcome to the Turnndown. So you’ve heard of social influencers, and you want to figure out a way to get started. Here’s the podcast and the episode that perfect for you. Today, I sit down with Anne-Julie. Not only is she founder of Anorak an influencer company, but she also comes from my favorite hometown, which is Montreal. So besides, you know, sharing, bagel preferences, we talk to her about successful campaigns that hoteliers have run targeting audiences that are managed by influencers and how to really, as a hotelier today, reach this audience and get them to speak positively about your products and services to inspire not only a youngest generation travelers gen z, but to reach an audience that may be right now only utilized by the big OTAs around the world.

And with that, why don’t we get right into it? Anne-Julie, I’m so excited to have you here. Welcome to the Turnndown, our podcast. That is here to inform and provide insights to her tellers about everything in travel. Anne-Julie, welcome.

Anne-Julie Karcher

So thanks for having me.

Sebastien Leitner

Absolutely. You have a very interesting story, and I’m very curious about your company specifically Anorak. And you tell me more about what your company does, how it came about

Anne-Julie Karcher

Sure. So Anorak is an influence company, so we create strategies with influencers and social media for any travel brands. So, of course, hotels are some of our our clients, but we also work for destinations or sometime brands related to travel. We’ll also work with airport, airline companies, everyone, and every burns around travel. And what we do for them is like, create a marketing plan in influence and trying to, yeah, have impactful campaigns for them in social media.

Sebastien Leitner

That’s amazing. For for people who are not familiar with influencers. How would you define, I guess, an influencer and what they do?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Sure. So does some things that people think, which is not the right things regarding influencers? So we really differentiate influencers and content creators. So someone with an influencer is someone who has an audience, and is making many famous audience. So, it could be on any social platform. You have audience following you, and you use this to work with brands or work with, companies and make money from the audience you created. Some of the influencers are just public figures, not content creators. So if we’re talking about an act, well, he’s an influencer because he’s making money from his Instagram account, but he’s an actor. He’s not a content creator.

So if we were to work with people who are, for example, public figures, we would need to have a photograph or a production team to update them because they won’t do their content alone. But we see more and moreings on social media now, people who are just content creators on social, having audience sharing insights sharing their passion, their sharing. Sometimes just their lives, on social, having an audience following them, and they are monetizing this audience. So this is influenced. And I also wanna push that Nowadays, we sell out the blonde girl on the beach with a cocktail, but that’s not the only influence that’s present on social media.

Sebastien Leitner

Okay. So let’s rewind the clock how long have been influencers around, like, at least in its current format we we think of Instagram, we think of you potentially TikTok, what other platforms are in use. You probably know much more than I do.

Anne-Julie Karcher

Sure. So how long I’d say around a little more than ten years? It’s also depending on the market. Anorak is based in Montreal, but also have offices in Toronto and in Paris. In France, we see that the the market is much more mature than here in Canada. So Anorak is a branch of influence, which is more general. And Clark has started in twenty seventeen in Montreal, and that was kind of the beginning. So I’d say around twenty ten, twenty twelve, the first campaigns and and professionalization appeared. But, yeah, it’s depending on every market, and yet it’s showing you.

Sebastien Leitner

Okay. And the platforms that are being used are mostly social media, or should we think of outside of social media as well?

Anne-Julie Karcher

So of course there are social media and we do a lot on social. We’re talking sure about Instagram Facebook, TikTok, the most, but also YouTube, to it, any other social media platforms, sometimes Spotify as an agency and as a creative agency, we’re always trying to put, like, the influence campaign at most and optimize everything. So our ideal campaign, we’re working with someone creating content, pushing the content on his social media platform, of course. But what we want to do is like get the influencers out of social media and then push it on maybe TV, maybe can be in a show.

I’m I’m thinking of one of our clients, which is the Badauk Islands, we’ve been doing a trip in twenty nineteen, creating content, maybe a lot of content during this trip and we’ve been optimizing every video and pictures we’ve been doing last year that we’re going to a show in Montreal And when they created the the boost for the show, they put the influencer here. We pulled the right to the inform the influencers to put it here. So We want to push and optimize all the content created because we know it’s expensive and we need to optimize it and use it at large.

Sebastien Leitner

So interesting. Before we dive further, I I’d love to speak a little bit about yourself, like, how you came about, you know, actually. Getting into that industry. Do you mind giving us, you know, sort of a little bit your background and how you ended up where you are now?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Sure. So I’m French. I arrived in 2017 in Canada for work. I was working at that time in the tourism in Street, in a third party called a DNC destination management company. So I was working with, amazing colleagues here in Montreal to sell business trips to Europeans and Mexicans coming to Canada. So I was an expert of Canada, knowing every restaurants, hotels, everyone in Canada. I’ve done that for four years, and, when the pandemic hits, of course, it was difficult for the company as we were just bringing people from abroad and borders more close for more than the, a year and a half.

So at that time, Michelin Vasant who created Clark influence in 2017 reached out to me because they really wanted to create travel brand because they’ve seen in a travel industry that they needed expert to work with the travel industry. And that’s true that this is something I’ve seen people from the travel industry, like, to work with experts in their own industry, which is not the case in every industry, but I really feel like since we’ve been created creating Anorak, we feel lots of friends are like, oh, finally, an influencer agency dedicated to our to our industry.

So that’s how Anorak appeared in 2020. So we had time because everybody had time. I think during the pandemic. So I reached out to lots of people from the industry to just talk about how they would feel about having an agency doing influencer campaign, doing trips, doing activations. I didn’t get any mandate because, of course, it was a very harsh time for the industry, but I got lots of interesting conversation, recreated the offer, recreated the website, recreated all of this, and then in twenty twenty one, I was pulling the project to make it, work. And I think we had We have amazing clients now that that’s telling that it’s a success, and we want to keep it as success for the next, like, the next chairs.

Sebastien Leitner

That’s fantastic. So you were ultimately an influencer before you created your own influencer I guess, company, if you will. Roughly, you were influencing business travelers coming into Canada. Is that fair?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Yeah. It came to us. Okay, love. I think everybody has an influence when we think about the term influencer, everybody’s not making money out of it. Audience, but everybody has an influence amongst the people that are dealing with in the in the daily life.

Sebastien Leitner

Yeah. I’m curious, and I’m, we’re gonna jump to influence in a minute, but as you were consulting business travelers into Canada, what was one of their most frequent requests? Like, were they requesting a Canadian experience? Was it the Sugar Shaq. Like, help me understand sort of what what was the step in my in my past jobs, what where do I touring us looking for in Canada

Anne-Julie Karcher

to go in the wood to see if it was during the winter to see, like, the huge amount of snow. Because, like, go to, like, eat mental syrup, like, yep. Definitely this kind of stuff. See, like, dog sledding, go in the nature, see the canoe if it was during the summer, it’s nature. Can Canada is equal to nature in the minus foreigners. So that’s what they expect, and then they land in Montreal or Toronto airport, and they’re disappointed because they’re buildings.

Sebastien Leitner

No.

Anne-Julie Karcher

Because when they land, we brought them directly to nature so they not affected. Okay. And at the end, we always finish with Quebec Montreal to show them that we also have amazing cities, very full of amazing experience. Montreal is really loved from rhinos.

Sebastien Leitner

Yeah. Now this is the podcast is called The Turndown. So we have to ask our sort of standard questions, which is, you know, What is keeping you up at night these days? You know, as you think about your business, as you think about, you know, on Iraq, I’m I’m curious what, you know, what’s keeping you up at night.

Anne-Julie Karcher

I didn’t got the these days. So if if I think general was keeping me up is when I take decisions in my life, personal or professional, which is not aligned with who I am or my values, mostly it sometimes happen that you need to take decisions and You didn’t think the right or you’re not sure, and this is the kind of moments where I’m not finding sleep, but I have saying that I have a very easy sleep, and this is very rare that I’m not finding sleep. It’s like maybe two times a year. So I’m very happy to say that I’m trying to not take things personally and have a simple life making me having a nice sleep and being able to sleep easy at night.

Sebastien Leitner

Yeah. Okay. That’s very, don’t know if it makes sense?

Anne-Julie Karcher

No. It makes a lot of sense. Right? Like, you talk about integrity. You talk about your values. And I think, you know, sometimes in business, we we are faced with a decision or an opinion that may go against our values and, what we believe in, and you know, that may force you into a decision or walk away from something that you may not feel comfortable with.

Sebastien Leitner

So, I appreciate that. I’m curious, you know, specifically you talked at the in the introduction about the strategy. Right? Like, influencer successful, I guess, marketing, leveraging influencers starts with a strategy. Yes. This podcast is ultimately for hoteliers. I’m curious if we Let’s start maybe there. How do you work with hotel companies? And what do hotel companies need? In order to be successful in this area.

Anne-Julie Karcher

Sure. So, yes, we’re talking about strategy. We’re a strategic agency. One thing a hotel should do before doing any marketing plan action campaign is analyze analyze what’s your objective for the campaign or the year for the months to come? And who’s your target? Who do you want to reach out? We still not influencer being, like, not done in a good way where, oh, you receive an info an email from an influencer. Yeah. I mean, come to the hotel, take pictures, but who is this? People reaching out to? What is he representing?

So this is questions you need to asked yourself? Do you wanna do a campaign to raise awareness, to drive conversion? Do you want to do it to do content creation, to acquire your followers Every objectives had a very specific and defined mechanics we should use on social. It’s such a complicated world social media and it’s moving every week, every day, every hour sometimes. In the agency, we have four people who are strategies like creative strategies so they are here to check the trials, monitor the social media, keep us aware of what’s going on to make sure that when we have something coming up for clients, we know what we should do what mechanics we should use, what influencers knew and would be good to to work with.

So I’d say The most important fall within if you wanna go into influence marketing is really analyze your needs and who you want to reach out to before doing anything, because Also, when you work with an influencer, you see his Instagram profile, you see the picture, you you see who it is, the values may be from it, but it’s also data. At the end, an influencer account an Instagram account is data. We have all the data out. What’s the age of the audience is looking is reaching what is with where they are located, what is their interest? So this is important as you don’t want to offer a room or, a trip to someone if it’s not reaching out to the potential customer that you have and that you won’t.

Sebastien Leitner

So it almost sounds like you need as a hotelier to have access to your, I guess, guest profiles in details and understand which audience you want to grow or identify audience you want to grow in advance before actually sitting down with you. So let’s take it, for instance, a hypothetical hotel in in Montreal. And they noticed that international travel is still behind, let’s say, twenty nineteen level. And they say, hey, my typical guest is 25-45 years of age, male and female single travelers, Is that the level of details you expect from, you know, from advertisers to then come to you and say, This is my problem. Help me solve it.

Anne-Julie Karcher

Exactly. We have a very specific creative brief show. We’re asking. Well, I I can’t go to my strategist giving a hotel and saying, hey, could you do something if it doesn’t have, like, every information you just say? Like, who we want to reach out to? Because you need to create content that will serve the audience at the end, and we need to know which audience we wanna reach out to if you want to create the right campaign, which would be working.

So, yes, definitely. This is the level of data that we need. And when we have that, before even checking the vote and not doing anything on our side, we will check what is this target doing on social media? What kind of content are they consuming? Because this is the the thing we wanna know to create the content they will check, because we want the content to be for the audience, for the future fits your customer, not serving the brand at the beginning.

Sebastien Leitner

That’s so interesting. And and and I assume because of the, I guess, breath and depths of of social media data that you can really narrow down your focus to, you know, income to, you know, social status true education, a chair, like, you know, the audience can be really defined extremely narrow, but it potentially could also be fairly broad. Yep. I I’m curious if I mean, if you if you have any recent examples about a successful hotel campaign, without naming, of course, you know, anything that is potentially confidential. Can you share maybe a couple of best practices of what you see as a extremely successful from a social, I guess. Yes. Informative campaign.

Anne-Julie Karcher

I have a very nice example. We’ve done just after pandemic. There’s a big hotel here, and it’s kind of a result here in Quebec, which is not from the Quebec, but it’s not where the people usually go, their audience were more bro. They were more attracting Europeans and Americans coming. So when pandemic hits, there were stuck with border flows that needed to attract people from Quebec, coming to the hotel.

So we think about who is actually they think about it and they came to us saying, okay, we need to attract the forty to fifty five years old woman having kids but who are grown up and she’s able to go on a daily, on a on a weekend with her husband or friends. And she has a good income because this hotel is quite expensive. It’s high end and size star hotel. So we reach out to only one influencer working to an Bonnie was one, which was an actress. So she’s an influencer because she’s an actress, but she wasn’t a content creator. So she we brought her with her with our production team to the hotel to create amazing content.

She had at that time, 25k followers, which is not a huge audience, but it’s a very specific audience and we know she’s engaging a lot with her audience because she’s very authentic and loved by people from Quebec. And she’s been giving a promo code to her audience to book the rooms, and she put this promo code in a story for 24-hours, and she’s been setting more than 15k of, sales in the 24-hours. So this example is really show that when you select the right, you don’t need to tons of influencers. You need to select the one that the audience is your future customers.

Sebastien Leitner

This is so interesting. So I love that your example also included the actual call to action, the booking, I assume the hotel selected their own booking engine. It went direct into their into their system. There was not an online travel agency involved. There wasn’t a high cost commissions involved. This was an influencer reaching an audience. With a call to action. Here’s a promo code, and the hotel was able to see the results immediately of the work.

Anne-Julie Karcher

Exactly. That’s fantastic. Is that I I just wanna add to this town that the hotel has quite an awareness, like, down known here in Quebec. It’s difficult to say, I I can’t say that this example would work would work with any with anyone because you also need to, like, know a little before buying this brand is very known in Quebec. So they had the awareness side done in the in the marketing center that we all know, so we can go to conversion.

If I have a hotel coming to me, like, I need absolute conversion. I need to to stop them right before saying, we can try conversion. If we have an amazing influencer in, people really trust him. It could work, but we also need to to to organize and make sure the audience know about it before booking because sometimes you see it once twice, and then you’re gonna put you don’t always book the first time you see you also need to, like, make sure, trust, and see before booking.

Sebastien Leitner

It’s a good comment I’m also curious, like, we’ll have likely a lot of people from the audience that are in secondary and tertiary destinations. Right? And I want people to discover my property. They, you know, they they’re just getting started. Should they think of influences the same way, meaning can your network, your company can in a reaching influencers help create brand awareness?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Yes. Definitely. Definitely. We we work with any types of hotel. I have examples with very boutique hotel here in Quebec. So, yes, definitely. I cannot tell you about another hotel in Montreal. We work with who had a very different objectives. They didn’t have any counter, so they were new, but they didn’t buy the content from the past owner. So they called me saying, and she was stuck, we don’t have any social media page. No followers, no content. How do we do that?

Of course, influence is very interesting. And here, we had several objectives that are so creating content was one of the first objectives because we had known. Second, their objectives were acquisition of followers because they had, as I said, no social media. So we’re we were starting your game from scratch and some objectives who are awareness because, of course, you gotta do a work thanks to influence, even if it’s not the first objectives.

We selected six influencers depending on every profile of people coming to the hotel that they have identified. So the business people coming, the family coming, the people from Montreal just wanna escape his home so that we we read creating six different types of of people coming, and so we hired six influencers corresponding to this tenant. They created all of them more than 450 contents for the hotel, so they were, like, easy for lots of months after that. All the content for right results for the vote time, and every influencers created a giveaway to his audience to made a follower acquisition. So they had more than 3,000 followers after the summer we we had no conversion objectives because the hotel were booked for all the steamer. So they couldn’t even take your room and the resignations. So that was really content creation, awareness, and position.

Sebastien Leitner

So interesting. This is great. From, you know, some hotel owners may wonder and say, hey, this makes all sense. This is great. Is fantastic. But how much is this going to cost me? Like, do you have a sense for what are what are some of the variables driving, I guess, cost? I assume content creation is different from you know, just doing a specific campaign that drives conversion for instance. Right? Like, how much can you can you share in, what they should budget and what they should consider.

Anne-Julie Karcher

Sure. So there are different things here. So a campaign where managing from A to Z is starting between, I’d say, 8-15k dollars. We handle everything. In this, it can be one influencer. Sometimes it’s four. It always depends. We make tail on mate’s strategy for every clients. Of course, as the influencer fee are including in our rates, it can go up to anything depending if you wanna work with justine Biber or not. It might cost a little.

On the other end, something I do a lot with clients because nobody’s always able to put this money in marketing is consulting. So as a consultant, we have access to trends, to datas, to things that hotels don’t have, and they need help for us to just create the strategy. So we could force some thousand dollars just create the strategy for them and they implement it. Sometimes they just need advice to help them select the right influence. So I also do package depending on the needs of the hotel, and I do this because we know that It’s a very specific expertise that we have. We wanna help people to use it the right way, and also we show our value by being consultant.

Almost all the people have been consultant for after that bought a campaign because they really see, like, the added value of working with an insurance company because we have, like, we’re we are being trained every week on influence. We know everyone. We have prices with the influencers. We know how to reach out to them and what we hear a lot from our client is that influence is time consuming when you do it alone and time is money, so you wanna save it.

Sebastien Leitner

I wanna I wanna talk a little bit about the future of where this industry is heading. Right? Like, we hear a lot about AI potentially helping content creators, create, you know, bulk content. This is still a fairly new industry as well, but I’m I’m curious Where do you see innovation? Where do you see most, I guess, changes happening right now? Are you talking about you’re talking about the influence industry?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Okay. So, yes, AI is a big change. We’ve already seen it. We’ve been integrating AI in some of our campaigns pushing it to our clients because it’s a very good tool to use sometimes, However, AI is nothing without you, man. I just want to push this, and we shouldn’t be afraid of it. We should, like, understand it, use it in a good way. I think the travel industry could use it in very good ways too. I just finish to ride the our trends for twenty twenty four, and, AI is a big part of it. So I I’ll be able able to share it. It will be on our plugins in the next in the next weeks.

Sebastien Leitner

So, yeah, I think that You can share some bad bite here. Like, if you have anything that’s, that you wanna share. It’s perfect.

Anne-Julie Karcher

Sure. So this is this is a big part about AI and how it’s gonna, but it’s for the travel industry, not the influence industry. Your question was about the influence industry. It’s, as you say, practically new, it’s crazy how I jumped from the travel industry, which is a very old fashioned way industry from a brand new industry, like the ages at the a agencies, like around twenty five years old maximum.

And I think it’s something very, promising for the future because people are really using social media to have news today So content and things are red on social now. So all the brands and all the people who want to reach out to People now are going on social media. So I think it’s very promising, but we also need to put limits and make sure, and we have a role, I think, as an agency to make sure that influencers are not asking too much, and they’re like, doing the things the right way and not not doing bad things on their on their audience because they’re talking to millions of people sometimes and also in the other way, like, making sure that brands are not asking too much too. Like, we really have the role of monitoring the the new industry cre which is being created

Sebastien Leitner

So we have a responsibility to to make sure that it’s a there’s an integrity and there’s an accuracy around the the content and the stories that are being told. Is that what you’re referring to?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Yes. I am referring to that. We just launched cut off ethics for influencers we’re working with, trying to make them understand what is being an influencer all the controversial stuff that we’ve been seeing that we discard of ethics can sometimes help them take conscious of how powerful they can be sometimes. We also see that in the new generations, when you ask people, what do you wanna do later? Like, person is saying insulin somehow, but do they really know what it means to be an influencer? They they need to know. So that’s also important to push all on in in our perspective of the ethics that an influencer should be aware of when he’s putting content on social.

Sebastien Leitner

Yeah. Interesting. Let’s go to the dark side. I’m I’m curious, like, for for a minute, like, because influencers can have a bad reputation, or there is a stigmatism on around influencing that there is probably a few players that have, you know, sort of tarnished the reputation of influencers. I’d love your sort of thoughts on, you know, what are some bad examples that, you know, or areas that we should as owners and operators and hoteliers watch out for?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Sure. So it’s difficult because you never really know, of course, as you said, it’s a belittle portion of info else we’re talking about is just without taking lots of space in the media coverage, when you see all the influencers doing amazing job that, like, much more than the influencers doing bad buzz or patter. What we should take, we all always check the profiles. It’s kind of you see it as an experience when you see the profiles if you can, like, trust them, but there’s no, like, tool saying this is a hundred percent sure we’re all human. So you never know what could happen.

Of course, we if there’s a doubt don’t go, because if there’s a doubt, there’s no doubt that will and yet I always say. But, yeah, that that’s that’s a fact, influence has a very bad reputation, and that’s our work to say that when influence is used in a good way, it’s very good and in a in a good manner, and I think most of the influencers are really aware of that. And it’s a shame that the detailed presentation are doing the things right. So finishing the other.

Sebastien Leitner

Yeah. In in search and travel search, we often have, official site Right? Like, sort of an an a label that illustrates, this is the property advertising, right, versus here is a online travel agency or advertiser or marketing company advertising a specific room or specific offers specific travel product. You mentioned earlier in in in in your stories that France was a bit more sophisticated or forward with with influencers than, let’s say, Canada, do you do you foresee at some point that content created or distributed by influencers will need a stamp of approval or it’s official is, you know, I I’ve seen some content that has to actually declare this as a paid content or I’m getting compensated for for this social media posts. What you’re saying?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Yeah. What what you’re saying is a law in Canada and in France. The content creator cannot push a content on social media, which it has been paid for without saying but that, like, clearly that it’s an ad. So, yeah, it it’s crazy. You you don’t know, you don’t know it. And lots of people don’t know it. And when we go on social everyday, we still see very famous influencers pushing content, and we know it’s an ad and does not it’s not put This is against the law, like, the consumer need to know that this is an ad.

So, yeah, it’s it’s more advanced in France. It’s beginning to start to being really put in a low in France. Here it’s still at the beginning. Push a stamp. So if it’s an ad, it should be there. It’s not who is checking, we don’t really know in France. They started to to rechecked, and they punished, and they oblate the influencer, the the influencers who didn’t do it had, of course, a ticket, but they also had, to put a black post during amounts, saying I have done something against low. This was an ad and blah blah blah. So we we’ve seen, like, it was some months ago when they pushed the note, they really did it with big influencers to show, like, maybe examples or so. And tell people put the ad because you can have bad bad things from this.

So So, yes, definitely, does all already stamp on the content creation, and what we want to do is our code here in Canada is put a stamp on the profile at all saying this people has read our code of ethics, which means He has at least the awareness of what the headaches about, influence should be according to to the industry.

Sebastien Leitner

Interesting. Interesting. Before we wrap up, I wanna sort of, continue on our journey forward looking. Right? And I have two two two sort of questions, for you. One has to do with, let’s say, future vision in ten years from now. Right? How will travelers discover destinations travel product. Is it is it the same way? Will will social media be the number one choice with What’s your sort of prediction in that area?

Anne-Julie Karcher

That’s a very good question. I had a big, big thing that metaverse was going to be something. It’s not right now. We don’t know if it’s

Sebastien Leitner

Oh, so you were a fan of Zuckerberg. You were like

Anne-Julie Karcher

I can’t say I’m not a fan of Zuckerberg. I’m not a fan of metaverse specifically, but I really saw something, like, the young generation, they’re afraid of traveling. They They they’re tied on a budget. They they’re not sure they wanna travel by plane. They have, like, some doubts that the older generation don’t have. And if you’re able to be in your couch and enjoying the people talking to people, like, why do you travel to experience, to see to talk to people, to discover food, to further experience at at all.

But if with the metaverse, we were able to go as deep as people are doing without travel, why should people pay for something they could do for their couch? So I know this is not encouraging. I’m not even encouraging it. I don’t want the travel to be there at that time, but maybe it’s gonna be there sometimes. I am a big fan of course of human, the human of really traveling, but we’re also aware of how the planet is going and how the travel industry as part of it as the the the other planes, like, have a very big impact on this. So metatravel was something. I haven’t talked about it actually for months and people are not talking about it, but it was really something two years ago when COVID hit.

I actually, like, people are really with into that. For the travel in ten years, it’s, yeah, difficult to say because ten years is far away, but not that far too.

Sebastien Leitner

But you think some form of virtual reality, allowing us to do cover a destination before we actually travel?

Anne-Julie Karcher

Yes. That could be something, and it’s already something when you go to fairs you see, like, metaphors to check the destination before going to understand how it is, see sees a lot of scapes, but I still think that people will when they travel, they will do it simply and do it for the experience of meeting people eating food, discovering culture. I think it’s getting more and more into this kind of travel and also local travel. Like, we see more and more people going close to their home. And I think COVID had a big impact in that too. We discovered that Quebec is beautiful. Actually, it’s only to take a plane for friends the same people to rediscover friends. So the local travel, so it was very interesting.

Sebastien Leitner

You also made an interesting, comment that providing me quite a bit of thought, which is, you know, the young generation is afraid to travel. Right? And for various reasons, like one could argue that Home is a safe place, or so we were trained for two years that by not leaving your home, you actually going to stay healthy, or you’re going to not be exposed to to to to viruses, right, or it could be that, they’re experiencing their live on a digital device on their phones. Right? They’re spending some time, you know, not a long time. I used to facilitate where where Gen Z is spending more time on the phone than interacting with people. I’m sure there are statistics for that.

How do we get them to leave the couch. How do we get them to leave? Is is this all our responsibility? When you say hours from the hotel industry, like, from the travel industry as a whole, like, we want them to to to leave their homes and and and get on a plane or take the bus or the train and go places. Right? Because our success as travel offers or as as as a travel facility depends on it, if you will. It’s also a fantastic industry for people who are not afraid to travel. Right? So how do we get that next generation to not be afraid.

Anne-Julie Karcher

I’d say inspiring and that new generation is listening a lot to social media and to influence us. So maybe giving this key message that traveling is amazing to an experience. You change your life. You need to do it to discover and pushing this kind of content and inspiring travel content, but we’re seeing a lot on social This is the kind of content and things that should inspire people to to go and travel. But also demystify all the difficult things that could be a travel or maybe we’ve worked with travel agents if you’re, like, very not keen on creating your own journey.

Sebastien Leitner

Interesting. Well, look, I think this is a great way to wrap up this conversation, Anne-Julie, thank you so much for joining me today for sharing your insights for for providing super valuable best practices in a very quickly changing ecosystem and environment. Invite everyone to discover, Anorak and Anne-Julie’s company but do work wherever you are with a social media strategist because there’s so much opportunity in telling the stories through the eyes of influences. Angelie, thank you so much.

Anne-Julie Karcher

Thank you, Sabastien.

Sebastien Leitner

Thank you for listening to the turn down. Don’t forget to subscribe and tune in next week as we discover new exciting guests.