Businesses have known for a while that they can’t solely rely on their own marketing efforts. The most savvy are utilising the power of influencers, crowd-sourced content and more, to boost their strategies. And now, Lastminute.com is one such company who have bought an entire platform to help with just that.

Lastminute.com’s latest acquisition is putting social marketing front and centre. The travel site has just acquired Wayn, a social media site specifically for connecting users who enjoy sharing destination-based tips and opinions. Rather than being a lesser-known platform, Wayn boasts an impressive community of 20 million registered users. Furthermore, these users are an audience of young and experienced travellers, in tune with the hottest travel trends and knowledge. And in addition, the site features its top users who are themselves travel experts- others can view their profiles to see the number of destinations they’ve visited, how many tips, questions and images they’ve posted, and the number of friends they have worldwide. A user’s Wayn profile appears in a Tumblr/Pinterest-style format, with posts from each person featuring blog content, videos, images, status updates, tips, Q&As and more, with others able to comment on and like these too. Immediately upon entering the site, visitors can access information on top cities, countries and recent discoveries around the world, search for holiday or travel locations based on interest, with helpful “Top 10”-style lists also featured for categorising destinations.

Aside from being experts in their field, Wayn’s users are well-connected, with many having amassed huge followings into the hundreds of thousands. Having these gurus on board should benefit Lastminute.com’s own reputation and ability to provide expert travel information. Plus, there’s a wealth of written and visual content for the company to tap into and curate. Storytelling is something the brand has always done well, having worked with a number of high-profile agencies throughout the years including the likes of Adam & Eve/DDB. Some of their past campaigns have cemented their position as a top travel guide- we particularly admired their “100 Things in London” campaign housed on their website, which featured a Pinterest-like montage of stories, facts and images surrounding the capital city.

Having Wayn under their wing will certainly help the company step up their storytelling and marketing campaigns, and also add to their plans to produce a greater amount of native video content. Recently, the group also launched its own content lab to produce videos- a move to appeal to advertising sponsors. In addition, Lastminute.com launched Travel People, its new media business comprising marketers, data scientists and creative designers to help brands reach their audiences of keen travellers. Wayn is just one of the platforms under the umbrella of this new business- Travel People includes this and Lastminute.com itself, as well as low-cost flight sites Rumbo, Volagratis, Bravofly and Jetcost. This, the company states, guarantees brands a reach to around 35 million unique monthly visitors and 10 million travellers per year. And it’s likely too that Lastminute.com envisages Wayn to be a useful part of its European strategy, helping forge unique identities for each of its brands- Rumbo in Spain, Volagratis in Italy, and Bravofly and Jetcost for a global outlook.

Do you think the acquisition will help Lastminute.com boost its storytelling and content marketing strategy, and ultimately ensure increased revenue? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.