Overview of Travel Buddies Lifestyle
We are travel influencers, Bernie van der Linde from South Africa, and Petra Top from Germany.
We met seven years ago at a Motorsport event in Germany. We are career women, mothers, wives, and best friends traveling the world (in our free time), to explore unique destinations.
In October 2020, we created our Instagram page @travelbuddies_lifestyle to diarise our travels adventures.
We have since registered Travel Buddies Lifestyle International Pty Ltd to offer hotel reviews and create social media content for exclusive clients.
We enjoy creating travel articles for our website and sharing photos and videos of our trips on our Instagram page.
Our social media pages have a strong focus on the South African and European markets.
Whatever your influencer marketing requirements are, we are confident that we can meet your expectations by creating unique Travelbuddylifestyle content for you! Moreover, you can rest assured that we will uphold all ethical issues relating to social media good practices (You may view our Code of Conduct in our policy section).
We are looking forward to engaging with you on our social platforms!
Who is Petra?
I live in Altusried, within the Allgäu in Germany. I am married to Hans, a well-respected Motorsport team manager in Germany. I have a daughter (Silja) aged 23 and a son (Lars) aged 27.
I am involved with a specialised project in Germany to develop electric cars.
I am a huge motorsport enthusiast and have been involved in it, in some form or another, for the last 30 years.
Besides traveling I enjoy skiing, learning new languages, writing, and translating, our blogs.
My motto in life is: “I travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape me”
Woman & Home Feature
We are featured in the September 2022 issue of Women & Home, South Africa. You can read in the travel section on pages 118 to 121 about “How best friends took on the world and the ‘gram”.
We are delighted with the beautiful article titled “Travel influencers at 50-something”.


Who is Bernie?

I live on a golf estate in Johannesburg, South Africa with my husband, Shaun, who is a retired racing driver, mechanical engineer, and business owner.
We have two sons, Kelvin aged 26 and Sheldon aged 23, professional racing drivers, living in Germany. This probably explains my passion for motorsports.
As the Principal of Business Management Training College, (BMT College), I have a sound academic and marketing background to complement my creative side.
I have a Ph.D. in Business Studies which ensures I understand entrepreneurship and the importance of goal setting and meeting objectives.
Besides traveling and maintaining our social media pages, I enjoy camping and spending time with my friends and family.
My motto has always been: “fill your life with adventures, not stuff, have things to tell not stuff to show”.
Travel influencers
Travelers are increasingly turning to the Internet to consult travel bloggers, influencers, and social media pages (such as Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest), to help inform (and educate) them about what’s new in the marketplace.
Why collaborate with travel bloggers?
Tourism councils, hotels, and marketers are recruiting the services of influencers and travel bloggers (like Travelbuddieslifestyle) to educate audiences and pique their curiosity about destinations, hotels, products and services.
Influencers and travel bloggers (like us) can promote your establishment more effectively because we are closely connected to our audiences, we understand their preferences and know exactly how and when they would like to engage.
We invite you to trust us with your marketing campaigns because we have specialised knowledge about our audiences’ lifestyles.
We can assure you that our collaboration will lead to renewed interest in your establishment.




Social media
We assist you in transforming your Instagram page and enhancing your social media presence by creating interest in your hotel through our exciting and unique content. We created a close community of loyal IG followers eager to engage with our content.
We contribute to the growth of your IG page by featuring your hotel on our fast-growing Instagram page with phenomenal reach and engagement rates.
We create content that is trustworthy and authentic.
Instagram Analytics
Instagram reach from posts
Below is an excerpt from our Instagram page’s highest post reach (period (6 August to 6 February 2023)
We achieved the highest post reach with our Monaco photo which had 17 400 views and the lowest post reach of 1408 (Bernie arriving in Santorini).
Instagram interactions from posts
Our top posts with the highest interactions for the last six months (period (6 August to 6 February 2023). Interactions include likes, comments and saves.
Our post with the highest interaction is the one where we announced that we have been featured in the September 2022 issue of Woman & Home magazine. This photo received 1806 interactions. It had 486 comments and 1296 likes. Interestingly this post also had 163 profile visits.
Comments
Our top post for the period received 468 comments (the feature article in Woman & Home). We pride ourselves in having a very engaged audience who enjoy commenting on our posts and responding to our questions asked in the post taglines.
We are experts in selecting the right hashtags (#) for posts.
This photo posted of Bernie at La Pirogue, on the 3rd of February, not only had an excellent reach but also a phenomenal hashtag count of 4795.
General key Statistics* of our Instagram Page
- We have 13.2k followers on our page
- More received more than 100k total likes to date
- We post almost daily to ensure consistency. We shared 721 posts (6 Febr 2023)
- Our engagement rate fluctuates, depending on the time of the year, but remains between 3.5 and 6.5%
- We receive on average between 500 and 600 likes per post.
- The post with the most likes was taken in Monaco and posted on the 15th of August 2022. It received 1324 likes.
- We receive on average 123 comments per post.
- We maintain an average of between 4500 and 5500 reach per post.
- We receive on average between 400 and 600 views per story. The highest story view last year was 748. “Have you used your passport lately”.
*All stats can be verified on socialblades.com and our Instagram page.
Even though we have the most significant footprint in Africa and Europe (because we represent these two continents), we also have a substantial following in other countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.
Countries:
- South Africa
- Germany
- The United States
- Switzerland
- Ireland
- United Kingdom
- Mauritius
- Netherland
- Thailand
- France
We are keen to collaborate with you in the following ways:
- You may wish to participate in a product test. This is a good idea for new travel-related items you wish to promote on our social pages and website.
- You may wish to collaborate in a giveaway for a weekend stay at your hotel (specified terms and conditions to be agreed upon).
- You may wish to collaborate with us by providing a hosted stay.
- We are willing to be brand ambassadors for your travel-related products or services.
- We are excited to compile a hotel review for you. We provide direct links to your website.
- All our posts and stories include excellent hashtags to increase your reach.
Please inquire about any of the above collaborations by emailing
bernie@travelbuddieslifestyle.com or petra@travelbuddieslifestyle.com.
Analytics of our website
We launched our website in April 2022.
Our aim is to provide additional travel-related content for our audience. We encourage people to subscribe to our blog to ensure they receive notifications when new articles are released. All articles are published in English and German.
Considering our website is not even a year old, we are delighted to have close to 250 subscribers to our blog.
What is even more amazing is that we currently have, on average, between 800 and 900 visitors monthly.
This is significantly increasing month after month. For example, in January 2023, we had 1686 views and 1062 visitors.
Our most popular pages are our hotel reviews, followed by the ‘about us’, and collaborations page.
The most popular articles on our website are: “Is it worth visiting South Africa?” followed by “How to do a self-drive from Johannesburg to Kruger” and “What to know before planning a trip to the Kruger National Park”.
Why you should advertise on our website?
We promote your hotel on our website through well-composed texts and visual content to share our experiences during our stay.
Our website is visually appealing and well-designed to attract new audiences and give our subscribers regular travel-related content.
A featured blog on our website promotes your hotel through explicit links to your website.
A blurb (a short description of a product or service for promotion) on our landing page is an excellent way to introduce unique products or services to our audiences for a specified period.
We also have advertising space available on our blogs. See the example below.