Qantas Group Executive Brand, Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Olivia Wirth said they hoped the "out of office travelogue" would inspire more colleagues, friends and family to travel the world.
"The traditional out of office message can be both generic and impersonal in nature and from our research, 60 per cent of employees say they would appreciate receiving something more creative," said Ms Wirth.
"We know that tips from friends and colleagues are the highest driver for people when choosing their next holiday destination, so we saw an opportunity to encourage travel through the millions of out of office emails being sent every day."
Instagram Brand Development Lead for Australia and New Zealand, Sophie Blachford said the Qantas out of office was a "unique and clever for an airline".
"Most people who are travelling activate their out of office as their final gesture before jetting off," said Ms Blachford.
"With this new service, moments from the holiday you're on will provide colour and personalisation to an otherwise mundane computer-generated email."
The application features only photos tagged with #qantasoutofoffice, meaning not all pictures in a person's feed would appear in the email.
Anyone with Hotmail or Gmail can use the innovation, as well as domains that use the Gmail inbox.
For Outlook users, the auto-reply message carries a link taking the recipient through to a web page collection of Instagram snaps.
Queensland University of Technology marketing lecturer Bill Proud said the idea was good in theory but users would need to exercise caution.
"I've seen people make some horrible mistakes on social media and something like this could test the boundaries of company social media policies," said Mr Proud.
"If it works, it's pretty clever but I wouldn't touch it myself. If I'm out of the office, you don't need to know where I am."
