UAE-based Emerging Travel Group (ETG) has added influencer marketing to its advertising unit through a partnership with Rippla, which links hotels with more than 10,000 creators, ETG said.
Rippla’s network covers Europe and the Middle East. Hotels set a target audience by location, age and gender, and the platform’s algorithm proposes creators whose followers best fit that profile. Deals run on barter: properties offer stays or other hospitality experiences in return for content and promotion. Hotels pay a subscription for access, and Rippla supplies tools to manage collaborations and track performance.
The Emerging Travel Group Rippla tie-up extends the ETG Marketing Hub. This is the group’s advertising arm, which sells banners, priority placements, bespoke newsletters and familiarisation trips to hotels, airlines and tourism boards across its RateHawk and ZenHotels platforms. ETG says the unit’s marketing revenue roughly doubled in the first eight months of 2026 from a year earlier. Barter lets a hotel pay for promotion in unsold rooms and restaurant tables, so most of the cost falls on inventory that would otherwise earn nothing.
“Social media and influencers are increasingly shaping how travellers discover, consider, book and experience travel,” said Felix Shpilman, ETG’s chief executive. He said creator marketing was becoming part of the booking journey and that the deal widened the options ETG could offer its partners.
Maria Donskikh, Rippla’s founder and chief executive, said barter collaborations let clients “turn available rooms and restaurant tables into marketing assets that help them reach new guests”. She said ETG’s network would carry the product to a far broader base of travel professionals and brands.
ETG says millions of guests use its platforms each month and that it works with more than 120,000 travel professionals.
Founded in 2010, ETG runs the B2B booking platform RateHawk, the consumer hotel site ZenHotels and the corporate travel tool Roundtrip. It offers more than 3.2mn hotels from over 350 suppliers and employs more than 3,900 people. In 2019 it raised $10mn in a Series E round from investors including Lev Leviev and Igor and Dmitri Bukhman.
Note: Emerging Travel News is not connected to the travel technology company Emerging Travel Group.
