Today we are proud to announce the world’s first travel exchange programme in an extension of our work with leading social network, Instagram.

In addition to the competitions you will have seen on our blog collecting images for Germany and Italy, we are excited to launch a traveller exchange programme with photo-sharing social network Instagram.

The idea behind the exchange

The Instameet Exchange will see members of Instagramer‘s groups from all bmibaby destination countries and the UK flown to visit each others cites and partake in a local Instameet.

Whilst working with the Instagram community, bmibaby noticed the growing trend for Instameets. Instameets are local meet ups for Instagram users, during these meet ups users partake on a photo walk around their city and photographing and posting their experiences from the day throughout. Instameets generate beautiful and inspiring content from cities across the globe, these include recent meet ups in Milan, London and Paris. bmibaby thought what better way to thank the community for all their recent support than launch the Instameet Exchange.

The world’s first Instameet exchange – London!

Saturday 15^th October will see the first Instameet Exchange take place, where members of the Italian Instagramers community will be flown in to attend the London Instameet. The following month the London Instagramers will be flown to Venice to complete the exchange. Exchanges are already scheduled with Instagramers in Germany and Holland.

The bmibaby team will be there on the day to report directly from the bmibaby Instagram feed, Twitter feed and Facebook page.

Julian Carr, managing director, bmibaby, said:

“Everyone enjoys taking photos when they are out exploring Europe’s wonderful cities and everybody enjoys sharing their images and memories of holidays with friends and families.

“Here at bmibaby we want to take this love of sharing your experiences and fond memories to the next level. We want to help you to find new and exciting things to do in cities and who better to learn from then the people who have been there and experienced a holiday destination or even live there themselves!”

What is Instagram?

Launched in October 2010, Instagram has ten million users who have shared 200 million photos – 50 million in August 2011 alone. Users take and share photos on iPhones, though an Android version is in development and several websites allow you to view Instagram photos on a PC-enabled browser.

Instagram users are also able to automatically share their photos via other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

bmibaby has been actively working with Instagramer groups in each country when calling for exchange participants.   The Instagramers community now spans 150+ cities worldwide (http://instagramers.com/cities/)