Most travel brands on Pinterest have beautiful boards and very little to show for them in their booking enquiries. The images are stunning. The engagement looks decent. And the website traffic from Pinterest is almost nothing.
I’ve seen this with boutique hotels, small tour operators, and destination brands who spend real time creating content for Pinterest and can’t work out why it isn’t converting. The answer is almost always that they’re creating inspiration content when what drives bookings is something slightly different.
Here’s how to use Pinterest for travel marketing in a way that actually gets people to your website and into your enquiry form.
Understand Why Pinterest Works Differently for Travel
On Instagram, beautiful travel content gets saves and a polite “someday I’ll go there.” On Pinterest, people are actively planning. They’re on Pinterest because they’re researching a destination, comparing options, and putting together a trip they intend to take.
That planning mindset is the entire value of Pinterest for travel brands. Pinterest’s own research shows that people often save ideas months or even a year before they act on them. That means a pin you post today can bring someone to your booking page next January when they’re ready to commit.
The strategy implication is that you’re not trying to create viral travel inspiration. You’re trying to be the specific answer when someone is actively planning a trip to your destination.
Create Content Around the Planning Questions Your Audience Is Asking
A traveller planning a trip isn’t just looking for beautiful photos. They’re asking “what is there to do in Costa Rica in October?”, “what’s the best small group tour of the Amalfi Coast?”, “where do boutique hotels in Morocco actually have good WiFi?” Those are the searches your content should answer.
For tour operators, this means creating content about experiences, not just locations. A pin about “What to expect on a 7-day Patagonia trekking tour” with a link to your tour page does more than a landscape photograph of Torres del Paine with no context.
For boutique hotels, the same principle applies. “What it’s like to stay in a riad in Marrakech” with a link to your property is a planning pin. “Beautiful Moroccan hotel” is just inspiration.
Think about the questions your best clients asked before they booked with you. Those questions are your content calendar.
Set Up a Business Account and Claim Your Website
This step is non-negotiable and many small travel operators skip it. You need a Pinterest business account, not a personal one. The business account gives you access to Pinterest Analytics, the ability to claim your website, and the option to run promoted pins if you want to test paid reach.
Claiming your website is what allows Pinterest to attribute traffic back to your account. Without it, Pinterest can’t confirm you’re a legitimate source and your content won’t be eligible for rich pins.
To claim your website, go to your Pinterest settings, find “Claim” under your account, and follow the steps to add a meta tag or DNS record to your domain. Your web developer can do this in a few minutes if you’re not comfortable with it.
Build Boards Around Trip Types and Planning Stages
The mistake most travel brands make with boards is organising them by destination name only. “Italy” and “Thailand” and “Greece” are boards that tell Pinterest nothing useful about what you offer.
Better board structures for travel brands look like this: “Small Group Tours in Italy”, “Costa Rica Adventure Experiences”, “Boutique Hotels Marrakech”, “Honeymoon Destinations Southeast Asia”. These are searchable phrases that match what planners are actually typing.
If you offer a specific style of travel, make that a board too. “Sustainable Travel Experiences”, “Family Safari Holidays”, “Solo Travel for Women Over 40”. These niche boards attract a specific type of traveller who is much more likely to convert into a booking than a general travel browser.
Write Pin Descriptions That Give Planning Information
A pin description that says “Stunning views from our terrace in Cinque Terre, Italy” is pretty. A pin description that says “Book your room at our family-run boutique hotel in Vernazza, Cinque Terre. Ten rooms, sea views, cooking classes available on request. Perfect for couples and solo travellers who prefer the authentic thing over a resort.” That second version is planning content.
The second description gives someone everything they need to know whether this is the right place for them. That specificity is what gets the right people to click through, rather than just save for later with no intention to book.
Use 150 to 250 characters for most pin descriptions and lead with the most useful information first. Pinterest indexes the beginning of your description most heavily.
Use Video Pins for Experiences That Are Hard to Capture in One Image
A 15 to 30 second video pin showing a day on a tour, a meal at your property, or the landscape of your destination tells a much richer story than a single photograph. Pinterest has been consistently prioritising video content in feeds and search results, and for travel brands the format is a natural fit.
You don’t need a professional production. Clips from your phone put together in a simple edit work well. What matters is that the viewer gets a genuine sense of the experience. One short video showing guests arriving at a camp and watching sunrise is more compelling than four static images of the same scenery.
Measure Outbound Clicks, Not Impressions
The metric that matters for travel brands on Pinterest is outbound clicks, the number of people who actually clicked through to your website. Saves and impressions are nice but they don’t equal enquiries.
Log in to Pinterest Analytics once a month and look at which pins are driving the most outbound clicks. Sort by that metric and look for patterns. What type of content? What destination? What format? That’s your signal for what to create more of.
If you’re getting good impressions but low clicks, your images are working but your pin titles and descriptions aren’t giving people enough reason to click through. If you’re getting low impressions overall, your board structure and keywords need attention.
Pinterest takes time. Most travel brands see meaningful organic traffic starting at the three to six month mark, assuming they’re publishing consistently. Consistent means at least three to five new pins per week, not one a month when you remember.
The work is worth it. Pinterest traffic tends to have a longer planning horizon than search traffic, which means the people arriving at your site from Pinterest are often more committed travellers who are ready to spend. That’s exactly the audience a boutique travel business needs.