Guests’ Instagram posts mentioning or featuring your hotel can be one of your most potent marketing assets: Not only are they free, but like all user-generated content (UGC), Instagram posts can provide valuable third-party validation of just how great your hotel is.

The marketing firm DigitalDonut offers the following data points to show why Instagram is so effective at amplifying hotel brands.

• One out every four search results for the world’s 30 largest brands are links to UGC.
• Millennials trust UGC 50 percent more than other media.
• Image-based social media posts produce 180 percent more engagement than posts without images.

Tapping into the psychology of envy

While you don’t have to be a Millennial to yearn for what’s authentic and unique when traveling, reams of research shows that Millennials tend to prefer being treated as explorers rather than tourists.

One way hotels can play into that desire is by providing Instagrammable spaces and experiences that help visitors connect with local history and culture.

One of the reasons we love Instagram is because we get to see gorgeous places that allow us to live vicariously through friends, or celebrities we’d like to be our friends. Creating opportunities for guests to distill their experience in an image can help hotels tap into what the Deseret News describes as the psychology of envy. And envy can drive others in a guest’s social networks to book stays at your hotel.

Travel photographer Chris Burkard, who has more than 3 million Instagram followers, told National Geographic, “Now you’re less than 10 clicks away from seeing an image on Instagram to purchasing a ticket to go there.”

Experience is the ultimate luxury

From the Millennial standpoint luxurious amenities may not hold as mush sway as authentic local flavor. The comfy bathrobe with velvet and gold piping? Meh. A bottle of pale ale from the microbrewery two blocks away? Eminently Instagrammable!

When posting to your own page, don’t overlook that other potent digital marketing tool; the hashtag. Include the right hashtags and you might be able to reach a lot more people, according to Bumbl.

Also, rather than limit your posts to images taken on your property, include images of places and events .nearby that you can associate with the hotel? Conrad Resort in the Maldives. has expanded on this concept by adding “Instagram Butlers” to take its guests to the area’s most Instagrammable locations for just the right shot.

Whether you can justify offering such a service at your hotel is not nearly as important as offering something guests can photograph and share. Because when they do that they are not only sharing their travel experience. They are also sharing your brand experience.

If you are interested in creating some Instagrammable spaces in your hotel, why not check in with the design team at Beachwood Custom.