From starting out by reviewing restaurants in Mumbai, to now doing luxury travel, Jinali Sutariya has become one of the fastest growing travel influencers in India right now with her page @travelstoriesbyus. With her Instagram partner, Malav Jhaveri, Jinali started her travel journey on Instagram about two years ago. But it wasn’t without challenges.
How it all began
Jinali says, “Malav and I have been friends for 25 years and we are both foodies. We both love going to different restaurants in Bombay and back in 2014 when there weren’t a lot of bloggers, we decided to start sharing our love for food on Instagram. We started a page and our following grew immediately. We started getting invites for different reviews and somehow, over time, 2 years into it, both of us got very busy in our lives. So, we stopped really putting up stuff. But then one day we posted a travel picture and it went viral. Everyone was loving it so we decided to get into the travel industry because we were anyway traveling so much. That was 2 years back and then we started travelling and eventually got into the luxury segment.”
The travel influencer who has 125k followers on Instagram, says that the experience so far as a content creator has been absolutely amazing. ” In fact, the pandemic has in a way pushed me to go and explore different places in India which I would have never done before. We visisted places like Ladakh and Manali and even Sri Lanka in the last year. Plus, the support and positivity we got from our audiences was overwhelming. We meet so many amazing people during our trips, and that’s overwhelming,” she says.
Creating the perfect balance
For travel influencers, going to different places becomes a part of their job. This can make it difficult for them to enjoy their time at a particular destination because it sometimes feels like work. But Jinali says that she has found a process that works best for her. “It used to get extremely exhausting in the initial stages especially when reels were first introduced because we had to create a lot of content. Earlier, I used to post 20 reels from one trip but now I know I don’t need to do that. I just need to post 5 reels and that is enough. That’s the work balance that I started to realize and implement over time that I don’t need to overdo it. I just need to shoot 2-3 hours a day and I need to enjoy my time,” she says.
The Indian travel blogger adds that she has a routine that she follows to help her maintain a balance between work and her personal life. ” I always take time off when I am travelling for at least a day. For example, if I am doing a three day holiday, on one of those days, I completely detach and don’t even touch my phone. I think it is important to do that more so because once I am back from my trips, my workload increases because that’s when I have to deliver and start posting. So, I try to take it very easy when I am travelling. I have a to do list and the minute I am done with the tasks on it, I start relaxing and you wont even know that I am a travel influencer,” says Jinali.
The vision and aim
The travel blogger says that what warms her heart the most is the fact that they are building a loving community on Instagram. “I am so happy and lucky that we are building a community that is so supportive and trusting of us. If I recommend something, my followers trust me to the point where they will take that recommendation and follow it. So, I am glad that we are building a community. Yes it’s a little slow but it is definitely working,” says the Indian influencer adding that she is very happy that she is doing it on Instagram, which is a platform that is ever adapting and growing.
“Influencer marketing is only going to become bigger as an industry because everyone is realizing that this is the best way to market and promote their products and services,” signs off Jinali.
Jinali is managed by Chtrbox Represent which also manages 50+ other top Indian content creators across genres like food, beauty, fitness, travel and everything social media.