WHEN 31-year-old Jeremy Jauncey founded Beautiful Destinations, the creative agency behind the largest travel and lifestyle community on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, in 2012, he was clear about one thing: the platform would never post pure advertising. Instead, it would, as he puts it, “celebrate the beauty of the world”. Since then, the journey has taken him, and Beautiful Destinations, to some of the most stunning locations across the world, and now India.
The Beautiful Destinations team came to India recently as part of a collaboration between ITC Hotels (one of the country’s leading luxury hotel chains), Luxury Collection (a brand of world-renowned hotels and resorts in more than 30 countries that comes under Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, an American hotel and leisure company) and Beautiful Destinations.
ITC Hotels, which is the exclusive franchisee of Luxury Collection in India, hosted the group of social media influencers at its hotels in New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. The team travelled the golden triangle—Agra, Jaipur and New Delhi—to capture their cultural experiences in the three cities as part of India’s largest ever InstaMeet (where a group of content creators unite to take photos and videos). The ‘social-first’ (specifically for social media) content has been shot using a wide array of photography and videography techniques.
The feeling of being in India for the first time, as per Jauncey, can’t be described in mere words. “You can’t verbally do justice to the experience we have had. We started in Delhi by going around the spice market… We don’t only have photographs, but some amazing videos as well that I don’t think anyone has shot or seen before. We then went to the Taj Mahal in Agra. The challenge was to capture a unique perspective and tell a story, as the monument has been shot a million times before. We kept pushing ourselves to showcase a modern story and experience that would inspire people to come and see the country. We have done a mix of shots that the younger audience can relate to,” says Jauncey, the CEO and founder of Beautiful Destinations. Be it Khari Baoli in the Old Delhi area of the national capital, the Taj Mahal in Agra or Nahargarh Fort in Jaipur, the Beautiful Destinations team says every experience has the potential to spark a conversation about India.
Each ITC luxury hotel served as a gateway to the respective destinations, enabling the influencers to experience the unique features of the region. “ITC Hotels, Luxury Collection and Beautiful Destinations have all worked very hard to bring this international InstaMeet to the country. It’s exciting, as this is the first time India is going to be showcased through a new lens in a medium that is growing exponentially and has a huge number of followers. It’s a platform that is instant and spontaneous,” says Dipak Haksar, CEO, ITC Hotels.
Shot for the mobile millennial audience, the content, which can be tracked with the hashtag ‘#IndiaInstaMeet’, provides a different perspective of India from what is usually presented in print advertisements and travel brochures.
The team not only intends to return to the country in the future, it also hopes that their pictures and videos result in more people visiting India. “The Beautiful Destinations community comprises over 12.5 million people in 180 countries… We want to get this content across to them and educate them about India,” Jauncey says.