10 years ago, influencing was still a niche— you’d see the general public gawking in the background at a YouTuber daily vlogging their day through a city centre, sponsored Instagram posts were a rare occasion, and influencers building their own businesses and rubbing shoulders with A-listers at events seemed to be impossible feats. But now, influencing is a recognisable booming economy, with the market reaching 21.1 billion dollars globally in 2023.
With TikTok’s adept algorithm allowing any user to go viral and craft a platform, the emergence of the app and its accessibility has been a major catalyst in the soaring of the influencer economy— and one of the app’s most nurtured hashtags? Travel, boasting over 40.3 million posts under its main hashtag, with the collective views growing by over 140% in just the last 2 years. It’s the epicentre for both national and international recommendations and tips and tricks when it comes to travelling, whether you’re a young solo traveller or looking to work abroad or a family unsure where to go next. The influencers fuelling the hashtag split into infinite directions when sharing their opinions on where is underrated and overrated, often times even clashing, so you always have your next trip’s itinerary well-informed.
And it’s excellent. I find myself resorting to TikTok more than I do travel blogs or books nowadays, as a specific search and a short and snappy video answering my question means I can get more done quicker, not to mention the added bonus of a discourse in the comment sections— a few of the places I have on my travel bucket list have been recommendations from a carousel under the Travel hashtag. It’s ignorant to immediately shrug off the perks of having travel influencers and guides in the name of rejecting its popularity or rejecting the influencer lifestyle as a whole, however, the content comes with its downfalls and dangers, as with any content sharing on the internet.
Everybody knows that social media is fake - people are not and will never be designed to be perceived in 2D - so directly basing your next trip based off of travel content from an algorithm is bound to lead to some disappointment, as seen after Albania’s beaches grew viral after previously being a niche holiday spot. This has led to a 26% increase in foreign visitors, and a surge of new visitors expressed let-down after their trip, uttering that it just wasn’t as ‘idyllic’ as they’d seen on TikTok, not to mention the influx of ‘Instagram vs Reality’ videos after tourists visit holiday spots like Santorini and sights like the Rua Nova do Carvalho (or the ‘pink street’) in Lisbon. These clashing expressions are why travel content on TikTok can be baffling and therefore lead to avalanches of response videos being made with differing opinions, leaving an audience unsure on where is actually worth seeing.
With TikTok’s algorithm being designed to popularise posts based on user interactions, the tourism industry has seen huge waves in holiday destinations like Cinque Terre, Albania, and Bali from videos going viral— and for certain spots, this overtourism is difficult to tackle (especially in small towns unsuitable for large crowds), both for local communities, traffic, and of course the planet itself with pollution and increased greenhouse gases. Most notably, a TikTok video of an enclave in Hainan’s Jianfengling National Park reached 65,000 likes and the park saw a visitor increase from 50 per day to 600 per day, drawing a correlation between the social media app and overtourism, with cities such as Amsterdam and Paris tackling this overcrowding with tighter tourist taxes, and Athens’ Acropolis currently navigating a trial run capping the daily visitors to 2,000 per day, a significant decrease from the sights average of 23,000 visitors per day.
It’s important to note that the overtourism industry is not directly due to the travel content across social media, but is merely a contributing factor, and it’s important to note that viewing travel content as oversaturated is subjective; any avenue of content can be a victim of oversaturation, and any avenue of content also has room for fresh storytelling and engaging content. Besides, having a For You Page crammed with glorious videos of the Italian countryside and Thai beaches surely can’t be the worst content to consume.
