This is the story of how Priya, a travel creator based in London, landed her first paid hotel collaboration — a three-night stay at a boutique design hotel in Lisbon with a €400 content fee — with 6 200 Instagram followers.
The details are shared with her permission.
Her Starting Point
Priya had been posting travel content for nine months when she decided to start pitching hotels. Her stats at the time:
- Instagram followers: 6 200
- Engagement rate: 6.8% (high for her size)
- Niche: Boutique and design-led hotels across Europe
- Content quality: Consistent, well-edited Reels with a warm, golden colour grade
She had one previous gifted collaboration: a London-based restaurant had offered a free meal in exchange for an Instagram post, which she had documented carefully (reach: 3 400, 14 saves, 42 comments).
She had no hotel collaborations and no media kit yet.
Step 1: Building the Foundation
Before sending a single pitch, Priya spent two weeks:
- Creating a simple Canva media kit (two pages: creator profile and collaboration packages)
- Writing a clean bio update: "Design hotel enthusiast · Boutique travel across Europe · For collabs: [email]"
- Reorganising her Instagram highlights to include a "collabs" folder with the restaurant post
Total time: roughly 6 hours.
Step 2: Finding the Right Hotels to Pitch
Priya searched Instagram for boutique hotels in cities she planned to visit in the next four months: Lisbon, Porto, and Seville. Her criteria:
- Under 50 rooms (smaller hotels have faster decision-making)
- Design-led aesthetic that matched her visual style
- Under 5 000 Instagram followers of their own (needed content more urgently)
- Already tagging other creators in their posts (understood the format)
She identified 14 hotels across the three cities.
Step 3: The Pitch Email
She sent individualised emails to each hotel's marketing contact. Here is a condensed version of the Lisbon email:
Hi Sofia, I'm Priya — a London-based travel creator focused on boutique and design hotels across Europe. I cover properties for an Instagram audience of 6 200 followers with a 6.8% engagement rate — predominantly 25–40 year old European travellers planning independent trips.
I'll be in Lisbon from 18–25 March and think [Hotel Name] would resonate strongly with my audience — your terracotta courtyard and rooftop bar are exactly the kind of details they save and share.
I'd love to explore a content collaboration for my Lisbon visit. I have a media kit I can share — would it be helpful to send it across?
Four paragraphs. Personalised with a specific visual detail from their Instagram. Clear ask at the end.
Step 4: The Response and Negotiation
Of the 14 pitches, she received 6 responses within two weeks. Three offered gifted stays only. One offered a gifted stay with a €200 content fee. One asked for more information and went quiet. One — the Lisbon hotel — came back with interest in a paid collaboration.
The Lisbon hotel's proposal: two nights, breakfast included, €200 content fee.
Priya counter-proposed: three nights, breakfast included, €400 content fee. Her justification in the email: "Three nights allows me to capture the property across different times of day — morning light in the courtyard, afternoon on the rooftop, evening in the bar — which produces a significantly richer content package for you."
They agreed.
Step 5: The Deliverables
Over the three-night stay, Priya delivered:
- 2 Instagram Reels (posted during and one week after the stay)
- 1 Instagram carousel (12 photos)
- 3 story sequences (total 18 slides)
- A photography package of 40 edited images delivered via WeTransfer
Reel 1 reached 28 000 accounts with a 9.2% engagement rate. The hotel reposted both Reels and used three of the photos on their website.
What Made It Work
Looking back, Priya identifies four factors:
- Niche specificity — "boutique design hotels" made her an immediately relevant pitch for that property
- Engagement rate — 6.8% gave credibility despite the small following
- The personalisation — mentioning the courtyard and rooftop showed she had actually looked at their content
- Moving quickly — she confirmed dates within 24 hours of the hotel's response
The counter-negotiation to three nights was also key. "I almost didn't do it," she says. "But I knew three nights would produce better content than two, which benefited both of us. And they said yes immediately."
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you get a hotel collaboration with 6 000 followers?
Yes. The key factors are a specific niche, a high engagement rate, a professional personalised pitch, and being ready to move quickly when the hotel responds.
How long does it take to get your first hotel collaboration?
Most creators land their first hotel collab 6–18 months after starting to create consistently, depending on content quality, niche specificity, and how actively they pitch.