Worldwide Social Media Benchmarks: Accommodation Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Accommodation social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram well ahead of Facebook worldwide: the median accommodation brand’s Instagram post earned 29 interactions in September, against five on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 2.15% on Instagram and up to 0.85% on Facebook across the quarter. Reels led organic results on Instagram, and Live Video, a rarely used format, led on Facebook.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 11,101 Facebook pages and 4,282 Instagram profiles in the worldwide accommodation category, covering July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026.

User-generated content: what’s achievable

Brands using Emplifi’s UGC solution saw these average uplifts in Q3 2026:

• 11.49x conversion rate
• 4.84x repeat website visits
• 1.03x average order value

The figures come from Emplifi’s Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, averaged across 68 to 83 accounts per metric. That benchmark covers brands in every category, so it is not specific to accommodation.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Ecommerce brands collect the largest share of brand interactions on Facebook of any category broken out in the data. On Instagram, fashion alone outweighs the next four categories combined. Accommodation punches below its posting weight: it publishes 3.0% of brand posts on Facebook but draws 0.8% of interactions, and 2.0% of Instagram posts for 1.0% of interactions.

Facebook interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The categories listed are those with the most brand posts in the region. Others combines every remaining category, accommodation included.

Platform landscape at a glance

Instagram is the bigger and busier channel for accommodation brands. The median Instagram profile has about 40% more followers than the median Facebook page and posts slightly more often, yet it collects about six times the interactions over the quarter.

Median post interactions

This metric follows the middle-ranked page or profile each month, so a handful of viral accounts can’t inflate it.

Instagram has barely moved in 15 months. It peaked at 33 in August 2025, dipped to 28 in early 2026 and spent Q3 at 29 to 30. Facebook slipped from seven in mid-2025 to five in September 2026, its first month below six in the period.

Relative median post interactions

Indexing each platform to its own 15-month peak makes the two easier to compare despite their different scales.

Instagram ended September 2026 at 88% of its August 2025 high. Facebook finished at 71% of its peak, the lowest point of the period for either platform.

Median post impressions

Impressions count how often posts were displayed, whether or not anyone interacted. They measure visibility, not engagement.

Instagram impressions are about a third of their August 2025 peak of 6,737. Most of that fall came between October 2025 and January 2026, and the median has held between roughly 2,300 and 2,900 since February. Facebook impressions eased more gradually from 1,776 in July 2025. The decline is not specific to accommodation: median Facebook impressions for brands worldwide fell from about 1,500 in July 2025 to 779 in September 2026.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 2.15%
• Facebook: up to 0.85%

Across the quarter’s three months, Instagram’s median ranged from 1.83% to 2.15% and Facebook’s from 0.72% to 0.85%. Instagram’s rate is up from a low of 0.79% in August 2025, with the steepest climb between November 2025 and March 2026. Facebook held a tight 0.72% to 0.86% band for the whole 15 months.

From this quarter, Emplifi calculates engagement rate from impressions instead of reach, because Facebook no longer provides reach data. These rates are therefore not comparable with the engagement rates in earlier quarterly reports.

Best-performing post types

Facebook: Live Video drew more than six times the median interactions of a Reel, but accommodation brands rarely use it: Live Video made up 0.1% of their Facebook posts in September. Among everyday formats, Reels edged out status updates, links and photos.

Instagram: Reels led, carousels came a close second, and both earned roughly double the interactions of a single image.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Photos still account for two thirds of accommodation brands’ Facebook posts (66.7% in September 2026, down from 77.9% in July 2025). Reels made up 11.3% of posts in July 2025, jumped to 21.6% in October 2025 and reached 28.1% by September 2026. On Instagram, carousels became the most-used format, rising from 31.1% to 37.8% of posts, while single images fell from 36.3% to 27.9% and Reels held at about a third (33.9%).

Top performing pages and profiles

Facebook: top pages by total interactions (Q3 2026):

Instagram: top profiles by total interactions (Q3 2026):

The Instagram leader owes about 83% of its quarter’s interactions to a single Reel, the top post below.

Top posts this quarter

Every one of the quarter’s top accommodation posts worldwide was a Reel.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median accommodation brand. A free social media assessment shows where your own profiles sit against them, platform by platform.

Get your free social media assessment

Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

This quarter’s data has no accommodation-specific ad benchmark, so the paid figures below come from Emplifi’s Worldwide ad accounts benchmark, which spans ad accounts in every industry.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes about a third of the average ad budget, 19.1 percentage points more than Instagram feed, the second-largest placement. Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels follow almost level with each other.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

• Lowest CPC: Facebook feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Stories
• Lowest CPM: Facebook feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels pairs one of the lowest CPMs with the highest CPC of the five placements: cheap reach, expensive clicks.

Spend, CPC and CPM by placement (Q3 2026):

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook placements win on clicks. Facebook feed and Facebook Reels both clear 1%, while all three Instagram placements stay below 0.5%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

Q3 2026 ad cost benchmarks, shown for September 2026 with the quarter’s monthly range:

Worldwide CPM peaked at $2.32 in November 2025, fell to $1.68 in January 2026 and climbed back to $2.15 by June. It dipped to $1.90 in July 2026, then rose to $2.25 in September, its highest level since November 2025. CTR rose through most of the period, from 0.95% in July 2025 to 1.28% in September 2026, the highest point in the 15 months.

The brands benchmark followed the same pattern at slightly lower levels. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for accommodation brands, not a ceiling. Pull the same measures for your own Facebook and Instagram profiles and set them against the September 2026 figures above:

• Median post interactions
• Median post impressions
• Median engagement rate
• Post type mix

Where Instagram trails the median, shift volume toward Reels and carousels. Where Facebook trails, test Reels and the occasional Live Video before adding more photos.

Methodology

This report is produced quarterly from Emplifi’s proprietary social media dataset, drawn from the platform used by more than 22,000 brands worldwide.

Data collection: Data is pulled once per quarter and reflects the state of Emplifi’s database at the start of the quarter following the period analyzed. It is not updated between releases.

Sample: 11,101 Facebook brand pages and 4,282 Instagram brand profiles in the worldwide accommodation category, July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026.

Reporting period: Monthly metrics are reported for September 2026, the final month of the quarter, and trend commentary covers July 2025 through September 2026. The ads trend series also covers July 2025 through September 2026.

Minimum thresholds: Reports require a minimum of 50 Instagram profiles and 50 Facebook pages for a given region and industry combination. Interaction distribution data requires a minimum of 300 profiles. Ad benchmarks require a minimum of 200 active ad accounts from the region or industry.

Key definitions

• Interactions (Facebook): Sum of all reactions (Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sorry, Anger), comments and shares on brand-published posts. Care reactions are counted under Likes.
• Interactions (Instagram): Sum of likes, comments, saves, shares and reposts on brand-published posts. Saves, shares and reposts are counted from Q3 2026.
• Median post interactions: The middle-ranked page or profile when sorted by monthly post interactions. It represents typical performance rather than an average, so outliers don’t skew the figure.
• Relative median interactions: Median interactions indexed to the maximum value in the reporting period for each platform, expressed as a percentage. Useful for comparing direction across platforms at different absolute scales.
• Impressions: The number of times a post was displayed, whether or not anyone interacted with it. Reflects visibility rather than engagement.
• Engagement rate: Interactions divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. From Q3 2026 the rate is based on impressions instead of reach, because Facebook no longer provides reach data, so it is not comparable with earlier quarters.
• Organic: Posts not paid to be promoted, detected using Emplifi’s internal algorithm with near-100% accuracy.
• CPC / CPM: Median cost per click and cost per thousand impressions across all available ad accounts, shown for the top five placements by relative spend.
• Relative spend: Normalized distribution (%) showing the average share of an account’s budget allocated to each placement.
• CTR: Median click-through rate for the top five placements by relative spend.

All costs are in USD. All figures are medians unless otherwise noted; UGC uplifts are averages. Data is first normalized at the profile or page level before aggregation.