What is travel influencer fraud? Travel influencer fraud is when an alleged social media travel influencer or travel blogger attempts to short cut their organic growth curve by either buying followers, inflating their organic ranks with spam backlinks, stealing and then re-posting engaging intellectual property for the the purposes of re-engaging new audiences with unethical content, all for the purpose of connecting with brands and promising to work on a campaign with them that will drive revenue. The hotel, resort or travel group might agree to pay the so-called travel influencer, or comp the influencer a free stay and even free food and beverage based on the number of followers the account has, because they doesn’t realize those followers are fake, the earned media value is worthless, and they will never see a return on the influencer marketing to be delivered... if it ever is delivered.