Beautiful Destinations CEO Jeremy Jauncey on how social media has transformed the travel industry

Jeremy Jauncey is the CEO and Founder of Beautiful Destinations, an award-winning creative agency behind some of the world’s most innovative travel brands. Ten years ago he saw a gap in the market to monetize his passion for travel and make it his trade. 

Speaking at Skift Global Forum East (a two-day conference assembling top CEOs and creative leaders to discuss innovations coming to bear on the future of travel) he told Euronews about his beginnings.

 “I would go and meet with or try to meet with leaders in travel who really didn't value social media, didn't think social media would be a platform for them to generate business," he said. "In the early stages of social media, certainly they thought that it was something that, you know, younger kids would use, that they would just be messing around it and kind of passing time without any commercial component to it. So it took us a little bit of time to knock down those doors and go in and meet with people.”

His perseverance and business savvy paid off when he was invited to collaborate with the Dubai Government to launch the world’s first tourism board campaign around a hashtag #myDubai.

“So as soon as we got that bit of business… scrambled, incorporated the company and then got everything up and running from there,” he says.

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H says social media has transformed the travel industry.

"Leading travel bodies are suggesting that up to 90% of travellers will book travel based on content that they see on social media first," he said. "So for many of us, the first time that we are thinking or being inspired about a destination, it's because we are scrolling through Instagram reels or we're on TikTok, or we're seeing