15 Travel Influencers to Know in 2026 (and How Brands Work With Them)

Last updated: October 2026

The biggest travel influencers right now include food travelers Mark Wiens and Best Ever Food Review Show (about 12 million YouTube subscribers each as of October 2026), culture storyteller Drew Binsky and road-tripping couple Kara and Nate. For most brands, the better booking is a smaller travel creator whose niche and audience match your destination, hotel or product.

This guide is for brands, tourism boards and hotels deciding who to work with. We checked every creator below on their own channel page or website in October 2026, including their most recent uploads, so you are not looking at someone who stopped making travel content. Counts are as shown on those pages. Numbers taken from a creator's own website are marked self-reported.

Travel influencers to know in 2026, by niche

Each entry covers what the creator makes now and the kind of brand it suits. The brand fits are our suggestions. Where a creator publicly lists past partners, we say so.

Food travel

• Mark Wiens (YouTube, 12M subscribers as of October 2026). Street food and local eating, with recent episodes in Greenland, Montreal and Pampanga in the Philippines. The channel also collects the Nat Geo episodes of Epic Food Journeys with Mark Wiens for Nat Geo. Fits: tourism boards with a food story, food and beverage brands, airlines.
• Best Ever Food Review Show (YouTube, 12.2M subscribers as of October 2026). Host Sonny is working to document food from every country, and the channel counts 64 of 195 so far. Recent stops include Bhutan and Somalia. Fits: destinations with an unusual food culture and brands comfortable with unfiltered content.

Culture and off-the-path travel

• Drew Binsky (YouTube, 7.51M subscribers as of October 2026). Stories about people, hidden communities and cultures. Recent videos range from $700-a-month housing in Paris to an American town 36 miles from Russia. Fits: tourism boards that want people-first storytelling, travel apps.
• Indigo Traveller (YouTube, 2.07M subscribers as of October 2026). Travels to "misunderstood parts of the planet," with a recent run of videos from Peru and Bolivia. Uploads come months apart, so plan long lead times. Fits: brands that want a serious, documentary-minded audience and can sit next to hard subjects.

Road trips and RV travel

• Kara and Nate (YouTube, 4.55M subscribers as of October 2026). A husband and wife from Nashville who started the channel during a year off in 2016. Their current series follows them driving a school bus to Asia in the Mongol Rally. Fits: vehicle, outdoor gear, connectivity and travel insurance brands.
• Keep Your Daydream (YouTube, 568K subscribers as of October 2026). Marc and Tricia publish RV life travel videos every Sunday. Fits: campgrounds, RV and towing brands, road-trip destinations.
• Hopscotch the Globe (YouTube, 328K subscribers as of October 2026). Kristen and Siya cover road trips, family and solo travel, carry-on packing and gear reviews, and they live in Costa Rica. Fits: luggage and travel gear, Central American destinations.

Adventure and hiking

• Kraig Adams (YouTube, 835K subscribers as of October 2026). Long solo hikes, including 85 miles in Norway's Lofoten Islands, the GR221 across Mallorca and the Ak-Suu Traverse in Kyrgyzstan. Fits: outdoor apparel, camera and drone brands, hiking destinations.

Family travel

• The Bucket List Family (YouTube, 1.53M subscribers as of October 2026). A family that sold everything to travel and now describes itself as full-time family travel journalists. Recent uploads include an Amazon river cruise. Fits: family resorts, cruise lines, kids' products.
• Travel Babbo (website and Instagram). Eric Stoen launched the site in 2014 and has traveled with family to all seven continents and more than 60 countries. The site's work-with-me page offers trip sponsorships, photography and ambassadorships, and lists past partners such as Adventures By Disney, Ritz-Carlton and Qatar Airways. Fits: upscale family hotels, tour operators, airlines.
• Bridges & Balloons (60k Instagram followers, self-reported, as of October 2026). Victoria and Steve Watts Kennedy have run this family travel site since 2012 for a mostly UK and US audience. Victoria is a professional writer and Steve a filmmaker, and they also make content for brands' own channels. Fits: boutique and characterful stays, family-friendly destinations, brands that need ready-to-use video.

Luxury hotels and aviation

• Walk With Me Tim (YouTube, 1.07M subscribers as of October 2026). Hotel reviews that run from luxury resorts to quirky and budget stays. Recent videos cover Las Vegas suites, Air France first class and Saudi Arabia's first cruise ship. Fits: hotels, cruise lines and premium cabins that can hold up to an honest side-by-side.
• Noel Philips (YouTube, 754K subscribers as of October 2026). An aviation and rail vlogger who tries "the best and worst" of airlines and trains, with a new video every Sunday. Fits: airlines, airports, rail operators, booking apps.

Solo and budget travel

• Adventurous Kate (120,000+ Instagram followers, self-reported, as of October 2026). Kate McCulley has run the solo female travel site since 2010. As of October 2026, the work-with-Kate page reports 290,000+ monthly sessions and an audience that is 90% female and 56% American, and lists campaigns with tourism boards such as Experience Scottsdale. Fits: tourism boards, women's travel gear, tour operators.
• Nomadic Matt (YouTube, 14.5K subscribers as of October 2026). Matt writes about traveling cheaper and longer and is the author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day. The YouTube channel is small, while the Nomadic Matt website is where the budget travel guides live. Fits: hostels, rail passes, budget airlines, travel insurance.

Quick match: which travel creator fits your brand

• Hotels and resorts: Walk With Me Tim for reach, Bridges & Balloons or Travel Babbo for family stays.
• Tourism boards: Drew Binsky, Mark Wiens, Adventurous Kate.
• Airlines, airports and rail: Noel Philips, Walk With Me Tim.
• Luggage and travel gear: Hopscotch the Globe, Kraig Adams.
• Outdoor and vehicle brands: Kara and Nate, Keep Your Daydream, Kraig Adams.
• Family products and cruises: The Bucket List Family, Travel Babbo.
• Budget travel services: Nomadic Matt, Adventurous Kate.

Want creators like these for your destination? Search travel creators by city and niche in Jem's Influencer Finder, brief them, and pay through escrow when you approve the content. Start a 7-day free trial.

Why most brands should book micro travel influencers instead

The names above are worth knowing. A channel with millions of subscribers, though, gets priced, scheduled and negotiated like a media buy. Most hotels, tour operators and gear brands get more from several smaller creators.

Jem defines micro-influencers as creators with 10,000 to 100,000 followers and recommends them when you want a niche or local audience, a lower cost per creator and room to test several voices.

Travel adds two more reasons:

• Audience location matters more than size. A resort needs viewers who can realistically book. A creator whose followers live in your main feeder city can be worth more than a global channel whose viewers are spread across dozens of countries. Ask for audience geography, the way Adventurous Kate publishes it (56% American, 11% British, 9% Canadian, self-reported).
• You can test destinations and angles. Splitting a budget across several creators shows you which hooks, seasons and formats drive bookings before you commit to a bigger name.

Small budgets can go a long way. On Jem Social, the app Triller split $1,500 between 40 nano and micro creators and tracked over 10,000 conversions, about 15 cents apiece (Jem Social pricing).

That was an app campaign, so use it as a model for structuring a test and judge travel results against your own booking data. For more real campaigns with sourced results, see these influencer marketing examples. For a step-by-step search method, see how to find micro-influencers.

How to vet travel influencers before you book

1. Watch the last five uploads. Creators change direction. While building this list we dropped several well-known travel channels whose recent videos are about homesteading and cabin builds, or that had not posted a long-form video in over a year.
2. Check where the audience lives. Ask for a screenshot of audience location by country and city from the platform's own analytics.
3. Look at past partners. Adventurous Kate lists past campaigns by tourism board and date, and Travel Babbo lists past brand partners. A creator who has delivered for brands like yours already knows the process.
4. Measure engagement on each platform. Run Instagram and TikTok numbers through Jem's free engagement rate calculator, and ask YouTube creators for average views on their recent videos.
5. Judge reach across every channel. Nomadic Matt's YouTube count looks small next to the website's reach. Many travel creators are like that, so ask for the full picture.
6. Check disclosure habits. Past sponsored posts should carry a clear disclosure. If they don't, expect to manage that yourself.

How to find travel creators by destination on Jem

Lists like this one help you understand the category. To book, you need creators who match your destination and your guests. Here is how that works in Jem's Influencer Finder:

1. Pick the city that matters. The Influencer Finder lets you search creators by niche, city, engagement and content style. For a destination campaign, search the cities your guests come from. For example, a Florida beach resort might look for creators who live in Atlanta or Chicago. For local experiences, search the destination itself to find creators who live there.
2. Layer niche and numbers. Add travel, food or family as the niche, filter by engagement, then review each creator's content style.
3. Write the brief. Jem's campaign brief generator builds a brief with reference videos, deliverables, usage rights and pricing benchmarks.
4. Invite or automate outreach. Book creators directly or let Jem's AI Autopilot handle outreach.
5. Pay through escrow and approve the work. Your budget is held until you approve the content, and you can request revisions in the app. Jem's analytics come straight from Instagram and TikTok through approved API access, so for YouTube-first creators, ask for their own channel stats.

If you'd rather browse first, Jem's travel influencer page is the place to find and book travel creators.

How to price a travel collaboration

Travel deals have more moving parts than a standard sponsored post. Price each part separately so nothing gets lost in a vague "hosted trip" email.

• Creator fee. Get a starting range from Jem's influencer rate calculator, which uses platform, creator tier, follower count, engagement rate, deliverables, niche (travel is one of the options) and usage rights.
• Travel costs. Decide who books and pays for flights, rooms, meals and activities, and whether the hosted trip is part of the payment or on top of a fee. Put it in writing.
• Deliverables. A long YouTube integration, a set of Reels, a blog post and Stories are different jobs. Adventurous Kate's page lists campaign pieces such as real-time social coverage, Instagram Reels, blog posts, takeovers and image or video licensing. Ask every creator to quote line by line like that.
• Usage rights. If you want to run the footage as ads or whitelist it, price that on its own line. The calculator treats usage as a separate input, from organic reposting up to a full buyout.
• Exclusivity. If a creator must avoid competing hotels or destinations for a while, pay for that time. Travel Babbo's work-with-me page, for one, says exclusivity agreements are on the table.

On Jem, the agreed budget sits in escrow until the creator delivers and you approve, so you can agree a rate without paying upfront.

FTC disclosure rules for hosted trips and gifted stays

A free night, a comped tour or a hosted trip all count. The FTC's Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers says creators must disclose any financial, employment, personal or family relationship with a brand, and that this covers free or discounted products and other perks as well as cash.

• Put it with the endorsement. A disclosure that sits only in a bio, at the end of a video or behind a "more" click is likely to be missed.
• Say it in the video. For video endorsements, the disclosure belongs in the video itself and not only in the description. On Stories, superimpose it on the image. In live streams, repeat it.
• Use clear words. "Ad," "sponsored" or "Thanks to [brand] for the free stay" works. The FTC warns against vague terms like "sp," "spon" or "collab."
• Use the platform's tools. On YouTube, creators select the paid promotion option in video details, which adds a disclosure label at the start of the video (YouTube Help).

Write the disclosure requirements into your brief so they are agreed before anyone travels.

Book your first travel creators this week

1. Pick one goal: bookings, app installs or content for your own ads.
2. Choose two or three niches from the list above that match your guests.
3. Shortlist five micro creators in your feeder cities and watch their last five uploads.
4. Price the fee, travel, deliverables, usage and exclusivity as separate lines.
5. Brief the disclosure rules before anyone packs.

Start a 7-day free trial of Jem's Influencer Finder to search travel creators by city and niche and book them with escrow-protected payments.