Emerging travel influencers and content creators like Trujillo are playing a fast-growing role in how and where people decide to take trips. Expedia’s 2025 Traveler Value Index shows some 60% of travelers draw inspiration for their trips from social media, with more than 70% making decisions based in part on influencer recommendations.
Their growing clout is drawing the attention of global companies such as Mastercard, which is teaming up with Trujillo and eight other creators to inspire people to seek out new travel experiences. Through the partnership, the influencers from countries including Brazil and Indonesia are tasked with creating content that highlights their own Priceless Experiences —curated events, tours and restaurant reservations offered worldwide to Mastercard cardholders — drawing on their knowledge and insights to show a unique slice of local life that may otherwise elude travelers.
For Trujillo, that means filming five stories and creating images that offer a snapshot of her country both through everyday human connections and Mexico’s rich art and culture.
For one TikTok, she headed to Mexico City’s stylish La Condesa neighborhood, surprising people by gifting them the instant camera pictures she snapped of them perched on a bench or standing outside a newspaper kiosk. In another, she visits a museum where an art historian explains the significance of a vast detailed mural painted by Diego Rivera.
Other Priceless moments she created show her laughing with four girlfriends on the subway, and sharing a family photo of her as a girl alongside her grandmother and little brother dressed as a Mexican “charro” cowboy.
“I always joke that I don’t think I can influence someone,” she says. “What I usually do on my Instagram or social media isn’t exactly to sell but more to create. I am a graphic designer who happens to be a photographer and it’s because I really love it.”
For Mastercard, the collaboration is an opportunity to expand and enrich people’s travel experiences and encourage tourists to rethink what’s possible beyond the best-known destinations — which is why the team chose up-and-coming influencers.
Giving each contributor free rein to interpret their own idea of a Priceless Experience is leading to a vibrant mix of unique takes. Influencer and drone pilot Marco Maragno has created a reel showing him foraging for fungi in the Italian Alps before cooking pumpkin risotto in a rustic cottage. And French photographer Lucas Troadec’s TikTok shows Paris riverboat guides Sanaa and Teva becoming tourists for the day and taking a sunrise River Seine cruise to see their city through fresh eyes.
For creators like Trujillo, devising and making social media content is about more than finding new followers; it’s about following her passion and bringing others along on her journey.
“I get the chance to experience what I love,” she says. “And it allows me to share a little of me with my following.”
