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In a world where social media scrolls are filled with wanderlust-inducing content, Gen Z and Millennials are constantly inspired to pack their bags and set off on new adventures. Travel trends are thriving, with a recent report highlighting how certain destinations like Mussoorie, Vietnam, Thailand, and occasionally offbeat destinations have captured the imagination of the younger generation. Travel trends show a 35% rise in bookings for unique destinations, with over 60% of travellers preferring peaceful landscapes, cultural experiences and adventure.
For the travel industry, selling popular destinations is relatively easy. But the real challenge lies in highlighting what lesser-known, obscure locations can offer eager travellers.
Enter Zostel, a hostel chain that has carved a niche by establishing unconventional locations and amplifying its allure through its storytelling. Pranavi Chhikniwala, Head of Marketing, Zostel, in an interaction, shares how social media trends find their way into the content the brand creates, and the focus is always on being informative and engaging. Zostel has consistently tapped into emerging trends that shape travel choices.
One of the ways the brand spotlights lesser-known locations is using a series known as 'Top 50'. The campaign highlights the top 50 experiences across India, going beyond Zostel's properties. The result? Posts that often garner up to one to two million views, sparking curiosity and wanderlust among its audience. However, it’s not always smooth sailing. For the brand, certain niche campaigns sometimes go viral, but others don’t perform as well, according to Chhikniwala, revealing the unpredictable nature of organic content marketing.
While Zostel has a strong presence on Instagram with 859K followers, other channels have also emerged as effective tools in building its community. Chhikniwala shares that YouTube has been rewarding given its algorithm gives reach based on your SEO metrics and consistent presence, unlike Instagram. She comments that any marketer looking to tap into a Gen Z or Millennial audience should consider YouTube as a way to build a community.
In this interview, Chhikniwala reveals how the brand is leveraging social media trends, its organic-first marketing strategy, and the lesser-known platforms that drive community growth.
Edited Excerpts:
What trends have you noticed among young Indian travellers that have influenced your marketing and advertising strategies?
If we talk about trends in travel, it’s important to note that, apart from all the memes and funny stuff that circulate on social media, travel and food are usually at the top of everyone’s list. Even the brands that are doing well tend to fall into these categories. For me, the brand's journey has been shaped by these trends.
After COVID, there was a whole ‘revenge travel’ phenomenon, and travel content started going viral in 2021 and 2022. Those years were key for us, even though they weren’t particularly favourable for many brands. Despite that, we saw significant growth and social presence, and a lot of it can be attributed to that period.
Travel has been a steady trend since then. If I talk about it in general, even our content and the things we talk about have been influenced by it. This trend has also impacted the kinds of products we've launched. For example, Zostel has always been known for establishing locations that aren’t conventional. We often enter places and, soon after, those places see a boost in tourism. This has happened with locations like Bir and Vagamon, which weren’t very popular initially, but after we set up, they became proper tourist destinations.
We’ve always tried to tap into emerging trends. For example, there was a shift toward experiential travel, where younger generations like Gen Z and millennials are looking to go beyond popular destinations like temples or sightseeing spots in Manali or Goa. They’re interested in hiking, waterfall diving, and activities like surfing. Experiential travel has become a key trend, and it’s something we've embraced.
Another trend we’ve seen is the rise of Southeast Asia as a travel destination. Places like Vietnam and Thailand were trending on social media last year. We also introduced Zotrux, a new travel offering where we take exclusive groups of 10 to 15 people on fully packaged tours with lots of inclusions. Our Vietnam and Thailand trips are selling really well right now.
Because these trends also find their way into social media, the kind of content we produce tends to be informative. Unlike many other brands, this approach works for us.
We focus on content that establishes us as industry experts—such as informative reels or posts that highlight lesser-known parts of the country or unique seasonal phenomena.
When it comes to social media, our target audience is a blend of Gen Z and millennials. It’s sometimes a hit or miss, as it is for most brands, but what works for us is striking a balance between creating content that establishes us as experts and tapping into trending topics. For example, we use popular seasonal content, trending audio, and whatever is currently relevant in India to engage with the Gen Z audience.
What specific challenges have you encountered when adapting your marketing strategies to align with the influential role of Gen Z and Millenials in travel planning? Can you provide examples of campaigns that have succeeded or failed in capturing their attention?
Some destinations are really favourites among travellers. For example, if we promote places like Bokarna or Mussoorie, it's very likely to go viral.
However, when it comes to lesser-known destinations, especially obscure ones, we have to get really creative, or people just won't notice them.
What works for us is a series we are currently running on Instagram, which is also performing well on YouTube Shorts. It’s called ‘Top 50,’ where we highlight the top 50 experiences anyone should have across India. This approach doesn’t depend on whether Zostel has a presence in those destinations; it’s about showcasing the destination experience first, rather than focusing on our properties. When we do these ‘Top 50’ posts, they often cross one or two million views.
As for content that hasn’t worked, we focus primarily on organic content marketing, rather than paid promotions. While we do paid promotions when necessary, we mostly rely on organic content. When we run niche campaigns, they can go either way—some content pieces go viral, while others don’t perform well.
For example, during Children's Day in mid-2024, we launched a back-to-school campaign. This was aimed at our millennial audience, as nostalgic content resonates well with them. It’s similar to how Paper Boat's entire strategy revolves around nostalgia, but we don't necessarily draw inspiration directly from them. We create nostalgic content, especially on Zostel Homes, another page we run on Instagram.
However, when we do very niche campaigns, they are more likely to fall flat. The reason is that we don't always use trending audio or follow the current Instagram trends when running these campaigns. The general strategy would be to stick to whatever is trending, as that’s what performs well.
But as a brand manager, I also have to ensure we stay true to what we stand for and maintain our identity through our content. So, we continue with these types of campaigns. For example, we launched T-shirts as part of our 10-year anniversary merchandise, and again for our 11-year anniversary this August. We try to be creative with the videos we make, but we’ve noticed that while such campaigns may perform well with creators, they don’t necessarily go viral with our audience. Since we're not focused on the e-commerce side of things, such as selling T-shirts, that campaign didn’t go viral as expected.
Despite that, our sales remained unaffected, and people still bought our products. So, it can be a bit overwhelming at times, but I think it’s all part of the process.
With reports indicating that Indian Gen Z and Millenn ials prefer travelling during off-peak seasons to save on costs and avoid crowds, how does Zostel position itself while catering to budget-conscious young travellers?
I think more than the off-season, the shoulder season is what these travellers prefer. It's typically the period between the off-peak and peak season. Naturally, during this time, the dorm rates, experience costs, and even taxi fares are lower, which is beneficial for them.
We are present in 85-90 locations across India, and the list is constantly growing. We don’t specifically take extra measures to target certain seasons. However, for a few weeks every year, we offer long-stay discounts and packages, particularly for digital nomads who are working remotely or in a hybrid setup. They can benefit from discounts if they stay for three, five, seven, or even 15 days.
This is usually part of our promotional activities for our mountain properties, which make up about 50% of our locations, particularly in Himachal and Uttarakhand. During peak season, though, things change, and we sell out a month or so in advance.
Instagram seems to be a key platform for Zostel. How do you approach content curation to engage and grow your community? Apart from Instagram, what are the most effective marketing channels that you use to engage with Gen Z and Millennial travellers? Could you share examples of the kind of content that works on each channel?
YouTube is really rewarding. Personally, I feel that YouTube is a more rewarding platform compared to Instagram. On Instagram, if you show consistency with the algorithm, it may or may not help you.
With YouTube, we know for sure that if you're doing SEO correctly and posting consistently about relevant topics, you're far more likely to grow on the platform. For any marketer looking to tap into a Gen Z or Millennial audience, I definitely recommend YouTube.
We also do newsletters, and we have an excellent email open rate and click-through rate. I think it’s because of the passion people have for the brand.
When I first started with newsletter marketing, I didn’t think it would be very successful because people often see it as an outdated channel, especially for a brand like Zostel. But it has given us surprising results.
If we talk about social media or digital channels, these are the platforms we focus on: YouTube, Instagram, and newsletters.
On newsletters, we try to do a mix of everything. For example, if there’s something trending, like Diwali, we create content around it, but with a more wholesome approach compared to what we do on Instagram or YouTube. If it’s a two-minute read, it should be worthwhile and bring a smile to your face. It’s not really important for us to sell our properties or talk about things in a forced way.
Even though we don’t use it primarily as a sales marketing platform, newsletters are excellent for community engagement. The audience can’t respond directly like on YouTube or Instagram, where people comment or DM us, but the engagement we get is still very high. I can attribute this to excellent copywriting. We don’t use any fancy tools for images; it’s a very basic newsletter. But the kind of response we’ve received has kept us going. I think when you try to talk to your audience in an authentic way, it really helps. My team is also part of the customer base, so when they write directly to the audience, it makes a difference.
Would it be possible to share the numbers that you all are able to achieve through your newsletters and Instagram?
For newsletters, we are growing our subscriber base. It’s something that we started primarily this year. We have approximately 50K subscribers as of now. Considering that we only started this year and we are not doing anything unethical, like spamming people with newsletters they haven’t subscribed to, that’s the situation.
On Instagram, we have around 50K followers, and our reach is usually 20 to 30 times more than our community size. Organically, our monthly reach is anywhere between 27 million to 35 million, depending on how viral the content is.
Given the traction that you have had, could you share any specific challenges that you all have had to navigate through while adapting your marketing strategies over these years?
A very refined, detailed analysis goes into understanding what's working because the algorithms of these platforms keep changing. I'm mainly talking about social media, as content marketing is our primary way of building the community and reaching people.
The challenge is doing your homework every day. If I go idle for even one week and let things run as they are, it's very likely that the content will stop performing because new trends have emerged.
For example, there was a time when voiceover reels were working really well for us, where we would use some audio stimulus to guide the content—whether funny, informative, or otherwise. It worked like crazy for two, three, even six months. Then suddenly, it stopped working. We had invested in all the gear, talent, and resources for this approach, and then Instagram changed its algorithm, demanding something different. This happens frequently, and it’s part of the job—things will keep changing, and we have to stay updated with the trends.
The challenge is that it can be demotivating when the numbers drop, especially after a month of hard work. But that’s the reality we face.
What innovative technologies have you integrated into your marketing approach to effectively engage young travellers?
There have been significant upgrades in terms of the tools we use ever since AI became prominent. There are many amazing tools that help us with engagement, ORM, and even other areas. Apart from strategy, we use AI for almost everything else. Strategy is still something that we hold very close to our hearts; we don't want a robot to strategize or plan campaigns for us. That’s a big no—strategy comes from real, new ideas developed by the whole team.
For example, in execution, we create mid-journey content, which is very experimental and usually works really well. To give you an example, we've posted something random like ‘Zostel in different multiverses,’ imagining Zostel on an arid planet, or similar fun concepts. These kinds of experiments have worked for us.
In terms of other technologies, we use automation tools, not for everyday tasks like handling DMs, but to assist with sales-focused content, such as when we are promoting trips or selling properties. There are tools that allow users to comment a word and receive the details directly in their DMs. It’s a trend on Instagram right now, but we’ve been doing this for more than a year.
We’ve always been a tech-friendly company, and that is also part of the company ethos, as our founder is a big tech enthusiast. We are also looking at more AI integration moving forward, not just in marketing but across the board. There’s a major upgrade coming for our app, and we’re striving to become a more tech-first brand as we go forward.
Can you share insights into Zostel's revenue performance last financial year and the projected growth for this year? As the hostel and travel industry grows, what does the brand's global expansion plan look like?
As of now, we are experiencing a 50% year-on-year growth. While I can’t share exact revenue figures, the growth has been steady for us.
In terms of inventory and the number of destinations we're present in, it's consistently growing.
November and December have been our best months, and the growth trend has been excellent. Looking ahead, I can say that we're expecting to continue this growth trajectory. For the upcoming year, you’ll see us expand into more international destinations. We're already present in Nepal and have some other destinations covered through our trips. We’ll also be launching properties in these international locations, so you'll see progress on that front as well.