North America Social Media Benchmarks: Accommodation Q3 2026

What’s in this report

North America accommodation social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show a wide gap between the platforms: the median accommodation brand in North America earned 28.5 interactions per Instagram post in September, against three on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 2.52% on Instagram and up to 0.95% on Facebook across the quarter, and Instagram’s rate hit a 15-month high in September. Reels led on Instagram, while on Facebook a rarely used format, Live Video, out-earned everything else by a wide margin.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 2,167 Facebook pages and 575 Instagram profiles in the North America 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 and region worldwide, so it is not specific to accommodation brands in North America.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Ecommerce collects the largest share of brand interactions on Facebook in North America of any category broken out in the data, 44.1% from 12.4% of posts. On Instagram, alcohol leads with 23.8% of interactions from just 6.8% of posts. Accommodation brands publish 2.0% of the region’s Facebook brand posts and draw 0.5% 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, ranked by their share of interactions. Others combines every remaining category, accommodation included.

Platform landscape at a glance

Instagram is the main social channel for North American accommodation brands. The median Instagram profile has about two and a half times the followers of the median Facebook page, publishes a little more and collects almost 13 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 started the period at its high of 30 in July 2025, dipped to 24.5 in February 2026 and recovered to 28.5 in September, its best month since August 2025. Facebook slipped from four in most of 2025 to three, where it has stayed every month since February 2026.

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 95% of its July 2025 high. Facebook has sat at 75% of its peak since February 2026.

Median post impressions

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

Both platforms ended September 2026 at their lowest point of the 15 months. Instagram impressions are about a quarter of their July 2025 high of 4,507, with the steepest fall between November 2025 and January 2026. Facebook impressions peaked at 974 in August 2025 and fell from 675 in July 2026 to 394 in September. The decline is not specific to accommodation: median impressions for all brands in North America fell over the same period, from 249 to 133 on Facebook and from 1,975 to 789 on Instagram.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 2.52%
• Facebook: up to 0.95%

Across the quarter’s three months, Instagram’s median ranged from 2.08% to 2.52% and Facebook’s from 0.88% to 0.95%. Instagram’s rate has tripled from its July 2025 low of 0.84%, rising in most months, and September 2026 was its highest point. Facebook moved within a 0.80% to 1.01% band for the whole period.

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 a median of 139 interactions per post, more than 30 times a Reel, but it made up only 0.06% of accommodation brands’ Facebook posts in September. Among everyday formats, Reels led at four, ahead of photos at three.

Instagram: Reels led at 37 interactions, carousels followed at 32, and single images earned 14, well under half of either.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Photos still make up about three quarters of North American accommodation brands’ Facebook posts (73.9% in September 2026, down from 81.8% in July 2025). Reels rose from 8.8% to 21.8%, with a jump in October 2025. On Instagram, carousels became the most-used format, rising from 30.9% to 40.0% of posts, while single images fell from 41.9% to 30.8%. Reels edged up to 29.2%, even though they earn the most interactions.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

BOLT FARM TREEHOUSE published 334 Instagram posts in the quarter, more than three a day, and took two of the three top Instagram posts. Kalahari Resorts – Round Rock owes 89% of its Facebook interactions to a single Reel.

Top posts this quarter

Five of the six top posts were Reels.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median accommodation brand in North America. 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 North America ad accounts benchmark, which spans ad accounts in every industry in the region.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 36.9% of the average ad budget, 22.3 percentage points more than any other placement. Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and Instagram feed follow almost level, at about 14.5% each.

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, Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels

CPMs are tightly grouped between $10.40 and $13.03, so clicks make the difference. Instagram Reels has the second-lowest CPM but the highest CPC, $2.94, almost five times a Facebook feed click.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Both Facebook placements clear 1.8%, while all three Instagram placements stay below 1%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

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

North America CPM stayed between $4.82 (January 2026) and $6.20 (December 2025) for the first 14 months, then jumped from $5.96 in August to $7.10 in September 2026, its highest point in the 15 months and more than three times the worldwide brands benchmark. CTR also ended at a high, rising from 1.39% in July 2025 to 2.00% in September 2026. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for accommodation brands in North America, 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

On Instagram, Reels earn the most yet make up the smallest share of posts, so there is room to post more of them. On Facebook, test Reels and 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: 2,167 Facebook brand pages and 575 Instagram brand profiles in the North America 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.