I have been doing hotel partnerships since 2018. What started as a side experiment is now a business line.
It started the way most creator businesses start: I looked at what I already loved doing and asked who would pay for it. I travel constantly. I film everything. Hotels need exactly that: real guests showing real stays to real audiences. The gap between those two facts was just an email.
So I started pitching. Not big brands first, but properties where I had a real angle. Early partnerships came in San Antonio: the Canopy by Hilton on the Riverwalk and the Hyatt Regency. Then Fairmont Dallas, Hotel Glorieta in Santa Fe, Postcard Cabins. Each stay taught me something the last one did not.
The biggest lesson: brands do not buy followers. They buy trust with a specific audience. My pitch never leads with vanity numbers. It leads with who watches, what they book, and what I will deliver: stories, a reel, the moments a marketing team cannot stage.
The second lesson: treat it like a business from day one. I have an LLC. I sign terms. I track deliverables. The creators who last in this space are the ones brands can rely on, not the ones with the prettiest feed.
This fall my calendar tells the story better than I can: San Antonio, New Orleans, Los Angeles. Cities I would visit anyway, now structured as work. That is the whole trick. Build the business around the life you already want, and the content never feels forced.
If you are an aspiring travel creator, here is my honest advice. Start local. Pitch the boutique hotel in your own city before the resort in another one. Deliver more than you promised. And keep every number real, because this industry is small and reputations travel faster than you do.