Middle East Markets Social Media Benchmarks: Accommodation Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Middle East Markets accommodation social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram earning about five times as much per post as Facebook: the median accommodation brand in Middle East Markets earned 21 interactions per Instagram post in September, against four on Facebook. Carousels edged out Reels on Instagram, and on Facebook photos, the most-used format, earned the fewest interactions. Engagement rates for this category are reported from Emplifi’s Asia accommodation data, where they reached up to 1.77% on Instagram and up to 0.65% on Facebook.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 489 Facebook pages and 329 Instagram profiles in the Middle East Markets 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 Middle East Markets.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Two categories own Facebook in Middle East Markets. Industrial brands collect 48.4% of brand interactions from 13.8% of posts, and airlines 42.0% from 18.1%, leaving less than 10% for everyone else. Airlines lead on Instagram too, with 36.3% of interactions, almost three times services in second place.

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

Audiences are almost the same size on both platforms: the median Instagram profile has about 6% more followers than the median Facebook page. Instagram gets a few more posts and collects more than four 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.

Both platforms have softened over the 15 months. Instagram started at 27 in July and August 2025 and ended September 2026 at 21, matching its lowest point. Facebook held at six through 2025, eased in 2026 and finished at four, also equal to its low.

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 78% of its 2025 high. Facebook finished at 67% 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.

Emplifi’s dataset has too few Middle East Markets accommodation profiles with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the Asia accommodation medians.

In that Asia series, Instagram impressions peaked at 6,442 in August 2025, fell sharply between November 2025 and January 2026 and ended September 2026 at their lowest point. Facebook impressions stayed between about 1,650 and 2,200 for 14 months, then dropped from 2,149 in August to 1,350 in September.

Engagement rate trends

Emplifi’s dataset has too few Middle East Markets accommodation profiles with impression data this quarter, so the engagement rates below are the Asia accommodation medians.

Median post engagement rates this quarter (Asia accommodation):

• Instagram: up to 1.77%
• Facebook: up to 0.65%

Across the quarter’s three months, the Instagram median in that series ranged from 1.51% to 1.77% and Facebook’s from 0.54% to 0.65%. Instagram’s rate has more than tripled since its low of 0.52% in August 2025, and September 2026 was its highest month. Facebook’s peaked at 0.74% in September 2025 and bottomed at 0.53% in June 2026.

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 led with a median of 10 interactions, but it is almost never posted. Links (eight) and status updates (seven) came next, both rare formats, and Reels earned six. Photos, which make up most posts, earned three.

Instagram: Carousels edged ahead of Reels, 26 interactions to 25, and single images trailed at 17.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

On Facebook, Reels rose from 14.4% of posts in July 2025 to 33.9% in September 2026, with the biggest jump in October 2025, while photos fell from 76.8% to 63.2%. Links made up just 0.24% of posts in September. On Instagram, the three formats now split posts almost evenly: Reels 34.2%, images 33.0% and carousels 32.9%. Carousels gained the most, from 22.2% in July 2025, at the expense of single images (43.3%).

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Alila Jabal Akhdar reached the top three with 14 posts. A single giveaway carousel, the quarter’s top Instagram post, accounts for 92% of its interactions.

Top posts this quarter

Food and offers led on Facebook, where two of the three top posts showcased hotel dining.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median accommodation brand in Middle East Markets. 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 Middle East Markets ad accounts benchmark, which spans ad accounts in every industry in the region.

Where brands are spending

Unusually, Instagram Reels takes the largest share of the average ad budget in Middle East Markets, 24.7%. Instagram feed and Facebook feed follow almost level at about 20% each, then Facebook Reels and Instagram Stories.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

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

Instagram Reels is also the cheapest Instagram placement on both cost measures. Facebook feed still delivers the cheapest clicks, at $0.17, less than a quarter of an Instagram Reels click.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed is the only placement above 1%. Instagram Stories comes second at 0.68%, despite having the highest CPC and CPM of the five.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

The monthly ad trend files carry no Middle East Markets series of their own, so this section shows only Emplifi’s brands benchmark, which pools brand ad accounts worldwide. September 2026 values, with the quarter’s monthly range:

The brands benchmark CPM peaked at $2.24 in November 2025, fell to $1.62 in January 2026 and climbed back to $2.09 in September. CTR rose from 0.86% in July 2025 to 1.13% in September 2026, the highest point in the 15 months. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for accommodation brands in Middle East Markets, 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, carousels and Reels perform almost equally, so mix both. On Facebook, photos earn the least of any format, which makes Reels and links the first things to test.

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: 489 Facebook brand pages and 329 Instagram brand profiles in the Middle East Markets 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.