Travel is a huge industry and travel bloggers crop up in droves every day. People around the world turn to these bloggers for information about exciting travel destinations, lodging, and vacation activities.
Luxury travel influencer Carmen Edelson stands out from the crowd. She focuses on high-end travel destinations. Her audience, which is primarily businesspeople and well-to-do retirees, turn to her blog and social media for the inside scoop on the hottest vacation spots.
Carmen’s Background
Carmen was raised in New Jersey as part of a Cuban-American family. Her parents immigrated to the United States in the late 1960s. Growing up, Carmen’s family didn’t have enough money to travel.
Unlike other travel bloggers, Carmen caught the travel bug later in life. In her early thirties, Carmen went on a trip to Spain to visit family. This last-minute decision birthed a desire to travel the world in luxury.
Founding Carmen’s Luxury Travel
After her trip to Spain, Carmen knew she needed to fit more travel into her life. She started traveling to luxury vacation destinations. With each visit, she shared her experience with her audience on CarmensLuxuryTravel.com. Not only did Carmen want to travel, but she enjoyed sharing the excitement of luxury travel with others.
In 2013, Carmen launched her brand, Carmen’s Luxury Travel. On social media alone, Carmen now has over 250,000 followers. Her goal is to share about her travel experience, inspiring others and helping them plan their trips.
Many travel bloggers focus on younger audiences. However, Carmen is one of the few who focuses primarily on people over the age of 35. Although her audience contains luxury travel enthusiasts of all ages, her primary audience is hardworking professionals or retirees with the means to travel the five-star way.
Carmen’s Business Today
When she first started blogging, Carmen focused on writing review articles of destinations, hotels, cruises, restaurants, and other experiences. As her audience has grown, Carmen has broken into social media content.
Now she shares her travel experience in real-time through Instagram. She curates snapshots of her trip as well as short-form videos for her Instagram Stories and Instagram Reels.
Her social media presence doesn’t detract from her blog’s content, though. On the contrary, she treats her social media like a headline while her blog captures her experience in-depth. Followers can get a feel for her experience on social media before turning to her website for a full review.
As her brand has grown, Carmen has been able to partner with travel brands. These tourism boards, hotels, and cruise companies all provide her with vacation packages that allow her to create dynamic and in-depth travel content.
Carmen’s Luxury Travel started as a hobby, so Carmen’s audience trusts that she only recommends things that she’s truly enjoyed. Both her audience and her travel sponsors know that sponsored content will contain the same honest take-aways as her unsponsored content.
Overcoming Challenges
Carmen is always learning because the rules of social media content creation are constantly changing. This constant change challenges her. Whenever she feels like she’s mastered something, social media sites like Instagram launch another feature.
While Carmen feels pretty comfortable using Instagram, the rising popularity of Tiktok has created a new challenge for her to tackle. She is looking at ways to dive into more short-form video content for Instagram and Tiktok, but all these things prove to be a constant juggling act.
Because Carmen’s audience is often well-traveled, she works hard to find hidden gems, unique activities, and options where travelers get the most bang for their buck.
These things mean that Carmen’s to-do list is never complete. However, her passion for travel and content creation have helped her push through any adversity she’s faced.
The Future of Carmen’s Luxury Travel
When the pandemic hit in 2020, the travel industry was halted. As opportunities for travel open up again, Carmen is excited to keep moving forward. For now, she’s promoting domestic travel within the United States. She hopes to open back up to international travel soon.
Carmen is confident that there will be a travel boom. In fact, she’s seen some of that with domestic travel as people have resumed vacations. She continues to look for new, fun, and creative ways to keep her audience engaged and excited about travel.
Carmen recently grew her team to include two full-time employees. She is confident that this team will grow as her business grows. With the additional help, Carmen hopes to take a deeper dive into video content to maximize her impact on social media sites like Instagram.
For individuals wanting to create their own business, Carmen offers some key advice: invest in yourself, follow your passion, and focus your energy on your strengths. If your strength is in photography or writing, hire someone else to manage your website and design your brand logo. Although passion is a driving force, you can only take your business so far when you’re constantly overstretching yourself.
Carmen’s passion for travel has certainly taken her far!
