Launched this month, Travel Seen is a ‘social media led’ online travel agency that matches holidaymakers to destinations and promotes itself through social media influencer content. Jenny Southan reports
Travel Seen is a “mass luxury” travel agency that books “boutique, new and special” hotels from around the world on behalf of clients. Featured properties have been “handpicked” and “seen by us and our trusted travel reviewers”, says the company. Examples include; LUX* Resorts, Omma Santonrini, Carlisle Bay, Jade Mountain and The Chedi Muscat.
Travel Seen has already “begun the journey of content creation for their customers” through trips (presumably provided for free) with Ronan Keating, Chemmy Alcott and travel influencers Ashlee Moss, Jess Sheppard and Jordan Rose.
The content the subsequently post is “set to inspire travellers after nearly two years of limited travel during the pandemic”. From Globetrender’s perspective, it is a way of leveraging the star power associated with people in the public eye to make visiting specific resorts more desirable. We predict Travel Seen will be particularly popular with the Love Island crowd.
Co-founder of Travel Seen, Jennifer Atkinson, is the former CEO of ITC Travel Group. She also featured on BBC2’s Millionaire’s Holiday Club – a behind-the-scenes look at luxury holidays.
Atkinson says: “During the lockdowns, we became more dependent on our social media feeds, using them for inspiration and escapism when the freedom of travel was taken away from us. Although the world is opening up again, there has been a seismic shift in the market. Consumers today are more focused on experience-led content that can influence their decisions, which is where the idea for Travel Seen was born.”
She adds: “Travel Seen aims to inspire people to travel again, our team will be using experience-led content from influencers to help sell holidays in a new fashion. First-hand experiences are the future, and are a move on from a website or brochure.
“Live interviews and video clips from people who our customers can relate to are important. We will choose celebrities and influencers based on their compatibility with the company ethos.”
Travel Seen is calling on hoteliers and travel PRs from around the world to get in touch as the team starts to contract the most interesting hotels and for consumers to “follow Travel Seen’s story and new life on social media”.
You can check out the Travel Seen Instagram page here. In currently has 286k followers but how did it achieve that in such as short space of time?
Travel Seen is backed investment firm Arete, which has announced it has led a £1.6 million investment into the start-up to get it off the ground.
Ben Hatton, partner at Arete, said: “This investment comes at a time of real change in the sector and Travel Seen offers a unique proposition to the market. Our knowledge of the digital environment, along with Jen’s expertise in the travel sector will enable us to assist Travel Seen towards its targets for growth, in what will be a pivotal time for the post-pandemic travel market.”