Travel Goods Manufacturers Create Travel Trends, Not Just Travel Goods

Travel trends are born online, and consumers look for inspiration in blogs written by people like themselves, pore over and “like” photos on adventure-oriented Instagram feeds, and create Pinterest boards of their dream vacations. Some travel brands have joined the conversation by creating their own aspirational travel content in websites, blogs, social media, and real-world consumer clinics and events, establishing authenticity and demonstrating how their products solve real-world problems. And joyful vacation posts prime consumers to be excited about purchasing luggage and accessories for their next trips.

Paint a Picture, Tell a Story: Promoting Travel to Promote Travel Goods

Atlantic’s website is product focused, but its social media is positioned as the voice of the family vacation. The Atlantic Luggage Instagram account is filled with photos of real family trips, entries in the #becauselifesatrip photo contest. The most popular Atlantic Facebook posts link to the Atlantic Luggage blog, by humor writer and travel journalist Erik Deckers. Recent topics include “The Generation X Guide to Millennial Travel,” a surprisingly hot-button issue with 122 likes, and “A Complete Guide to U.S. Amusement Parks: Northwest,” with 147 likes.  As Deckers puts it, Atlantic posts about “the things we do with luggage, rather than talking about luggage.” A typical post, “How to Drive 1,000 miles to Florida in a Single Day,” gets real, providing driver nap schedules, the best time to leave to optimize kid car-sleeping (3 a.m.), and the advice. “first, understand that you’re going to be dead tired.” Consumers will gravitate to a blog that acknowledges that getting a family of five to Disney World within budget may mean only one travel day in each direction (a big endeavor with correspondingly big savings on vacation days, hotel rooms, and airplane flights). Atlantic succeeds because it is authentic.

Eagle Creek’s web presence is filled with attainable adventures, like paddleboarding or running a recreational half-marathon. Most of the banners and links on Eagle Creek’s site are action photos featuring brand ambassadors and relatable sports models. Alli Noland, PR spokesperson for Eagle Creek, explains: “Eagle Creek has always considered itself to be not only a manufacturer but a travel category ambassador, showing people where, how and why to travel.” Eagle Creek’s website features the Travel Hub travel blog, which mixes travel destination inspiration, travel tips, and practical packing advice. A recent article, “Hidden Gems: Eight Riviera Maya Spots Unknown to Tourists” received dozens of shares on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. With 32,000 likes, the Eagle Creek Facebook page provides plenty of social media traction, but Eagle Creek’s Instagram account also averages 40-50 likes per post. The most popular posts include a collaboration with the Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon series, and an inspiring quote (and link to a blog post) from a cancer survivor and Eagle Creek Ambassador. Off-line, Eagle Creek ambassadors hold packing demos in partnership with retailers, showing consumers how to use bags, packing cubes, and other accessories in person. (Read more about Angel Castellanos’ packing seminars in the Retailer Trend story on page ??) A core company value is that all employees have a visceral understanding of foreign travel, so that product development, marketing and sales are all driven by personal, real world experience. “Eagle Creek focuses on travel as an experience, both the destination and the journey. It’s not only point A and point B, but everything in between,” says Nolan. Eagle Creek even provides a “voluntourism” program benefit to employees, who receive paid time off every year to volunteer locally or go on a volunteer trip, in order broaden their perspective and immerse themselves in another culture.

Dialogue and Development

An eBags hallmark has always been consumer feedback-driven development. This year eBags collaborated with TripAdvisor to create a new essential travel collection, using TripAdvisor input from millions of real travelers.  eBags’ new collection shows how a company can fully integrate consumer feedback into product development in an authentic way. The next step for eBags is to continue the conversation with the new eBags Escapist portal, with Editorial Director Staci Amend at the helm. Described on its blog as “an interactive travel expertise portal,” eBags Escapist will feature destination-specific packing lists and buying guides, informed by Travelers’ Choice best-of lists compiled by TripAdvisor. “Though we’ve been selling bags since 1999, we are first and foremost a travel company,” says Peter Cobb, eBags founder and EVP. “Our goal with partnerships with global companies like TripAdvisor, as well as the launch of our new eBags Escapist portal, is to inspire wanderlust and help our customers gear up for a great journey.”

TripAdvisor inspires strong feelings of trust because of its status as the top “peer review” travel site, while National Geographic is associated with seeing the world, exploration, and extreme environments – which Craghoppers is leveraging with its National Geographic collection. Partnering with National Geographic magazine also conveys a halo of reliability and hard science. The Craghoppers insect-protection clothing using NosiLife fabric technology has been explicitly cited as helping prevent the spread of the Zika virus on websites from the National Geographic store to adventuretravel.com, establishing Craghoppers as a trusted solution to a dangerous travel problem.

Craghoppers also distinguishes itself on social media with strong Pinterest and Instagram accounts. Craghoppers curates Pinterest boards on everything from backpacking snacks to the travel-inspiration board “Adventure Awaits.” “We want to support those who travel with a purpose, and Benjamin Sadd’s inspirational work he is raising awareness of conservation issues across the world,” says Jim McNamara, CEO of Craghoppers. “If we can make sure he travels safely with the help of our insect repellent clothing, then we have done our job!” You can see photos from Sadd’s “The Trail to Anywhere” photo and film project on the Craghoppers Instagram account.

“The key to our success has been that, as well as designing fabulous product, we focus on the needs of our consumer,” McNamara explains, “similarly with the partners we work with, such as National Geographic, we sit together and work out what product would be right for them. It works so much better when we work collaboratively.”

HEX is the undisputed social media star of the travel goods industry. The HEX Instagram feed averages 300 likes per image from its 32,000 followers. You’ll rarely see a straight product photo, but you will see images inspired by the hashtags #HEXplore and the #HEXCLAMEET photo contest (also documented on Snap Chat). The HEX website is full of aspirational images of the coolest imaginable Gen Y lifestyle. A typical blog post on the Culture page documents an L.A. concert by brand ambassador Saint Motel. Product collaborations and capsule collections include a widely lauded sneaker backpack (playing on hip-hop’s sneaker-obsessed fan base), skate-oriented products developed with skaters like Guy Mariano and Theotis Beasley, and collections with illustrators, pop and graffiti artists like Jahan Loh, Eric Haze and Cole Gehrst. “We always want our products to be every bit as functional as good-looking. So we work with leaders in various fields to develop, test and refine product ideas,” says HEX Co-founder Trent Valladaras. What began as the constant impulse to collaborate is becoming an industry trend, as consumers respond to bags with cross-over features. “We are experiencing traction in our space because we are bringing multi-functional travel pieces, like gym bags or backpacks with sneaker compartments as well as tech compartments to market.” The newest HEX collaboration is the Raven Camera Collection of camera bag backpacks. (Kim I have pictures, photo credit Travis Jensen) “This is a good example of product where we worked closely with top photographers to create, test, and refine product ideas that ultimately featured in these bags” said Valladaras.

The press has responded, featuring Hex in mainstream media outlets like People, Men’s Health, Maxim, Seventeen, and InStyle. HEX bags and accessories receive monthly mentions on trend-setting lifestyle sites like hypebeast.com, coolhunting.com and highsnobiety.com. If you haven’t heard of some of these lifestyle sites, that doesn’t mean they lack influence – People has 2.4 million Instagram followers, while Hypebeast.com boasts 2.9 million Instagram followers.

Cabeau sells the fun of travel in order to sell travel goods products, with a 10:1 ratio of travel stories and pictures to product pitches on its blog and social media. While the blog itself focuses on destinations and travel hacks, the Instagram account is filled with aspirational photos reflecting the promoted hashtags #travelpic #travelupgrade #traveltheworld. The Cabeau Facebook page features beautiful photos and links to in-depth travel articles, while the charmingly quirky global musical collaboration, Radio Cabeau, gives Cabeau a literal voice as a world citizen. “As an extension of the travel experience, Cabeau connects with a community of travelers through our social media channels, says John Hanna, senior director of brand marketing.  “We provide travel tips, aspirational destinations, playlists, and news on our latest award winning products – all in an effort to make each trip a first class experience.”

Cabeau’s mission to lead the travel comfort conversation is aligned with a strong “travel comfort hacks” trend, one that yields pages of Google search results. Hanna says, “we’ve built a lifestyle brand to help make each of life’s journey’s easier, more manageable and infinitely more comfortable.” Recent PR stories equating Cabeau products with the travel comfort-hacks trend are found on the “Today” show, Travel + Leisure, Business Insider, Teen Vogue, and USA Today. Cabeau has achieved not only award-winning product innovation and excellence in marketing, they are also thought leaders in the larger consumer travel sphere.

Cheerleaders, Advocates, Trend-Setters and Ambassadors

The commonality between Atlantic Luggage, Eagle Creek, eBags, Craghoppers, HEX and Cabeau is not just a marketing focus on travel, rather than travel goods. It’s that all of these companies see themselves as ambassadors for travel. Whether their goal is thought leadership, advocacy, or creating and driving trends, they are part of an active, ongoing conversation with consumers, that is advancing both the travel goods industry and the experience of travel itself.

This story originally appeared in the Winter 2016 issue of Travel Goods Showcase