How to be a YouTube travel star

Marilyn Parver never wanted to become a YouTube star. Neither did Iesha Walker. Their path to social media celebrity didn't involve uploading an overproduced music video, clips of dancing comedians or laughing babies. They just took their video cameras on vacation.

Parver whipped out her Handycam after two passengers began arguing on a recent JetBlue flight and taped the fracas. When flight attendants asked her to erase the footage because they were afraid it might "end up on YouTube," she refused -- and was later escorted from the plane in handcuffs. The clip ended up on YouTube, where more than 30,000 people watched it.

When Walker checked into her cabin on Carnival's Destiny, she found wires hanging from the lamps above the beds, a soiled toilet seat and toilet bowl, a grimy shower stall, broken tiles and a broken wall panel above the bed. And there were bugs. Lots of bugs. So she pointed her camera lens at the infestation. When Carnival refused to reimburse her for the cruise, she uploaded the video.

This is only the beginning.

Online video is big. Americans watched a record 13.5 billion online videos in October, the last month for which figures are available, according to Comscore. That's a 45 percent increase from a year ago. Nearly 8 out of 10 Internet users watched an online video, and among younger users, the Internet has already become a TV substitute.

Some of the most effective Internet videos are ones that allow travelers to "voice and record their own perspective, opinion and experience," says Fionn Downhill, the chief executive of Elixir Interactive, an interactive marketing agency in Scottsdale, Arizona. "Videos documenting authentic, user-generated experiences spread like quick fire because they speak to the concerns and sentiment of the market."

Get the full story at: CNN