The Tiktokification of Travel

As a typical member of Gen Z, I often find myself reaching for social media as a search engine, especially when seeking advice or subjective opinions. A traveller at heart, I also enjoy seeking out new and unique places to discover. These two elements combined make me an avid consumer of “hidden gems” and other forms of travel content on social media, namely TikTok.

Because of this, I recently spent a little over two hours queuing in Paris, listening to conversations in Spanish, English, or even German, to find myself cramped in a cellar listening to some—quite lovely—jazz unable to dance due to being stuck in a mass of immobile individuals with their eyes glued to their phone screens ensuring they were capturing the best angle.

When my parents go travelling, they still lug around the same Lonely Planet travel guide they bought in their early ‘20s. Reliable and sturdy, these guides were created in the 1970s by Maureen and Tony Wheeler as a recollection of their travels to advise young and broke backpackers like themselves. In the 2000s, the rise of the Internet brought about travel bloggers, as just about anyone could create a website to share their travel experiences, almost like sharing their diary with the world. Nowadays, this type of content has morphed into short– or long–form videos across a variety of apps. More discreet than the cumbersome guidebooks, the altered form of travel content has not changed the goal: to facilitate the discovery of new, “secret” places and destinations.

Back in the ‘70s, the Wheelers were already criticised for “ruining” low-key destinations, like Bali. They argued back that they were merely a small factor in a sea of increasing globalization. After all, they did not set up the flights or build touristic facilities. Plus, people bought travel guides of places they already intended to travel to, which is not the case with social media. Influencers on TikTok and other social media arguably hold a lot more power when it comes to creating travel trends. People with the vague idea of going on holiday but unsure of the destination will search up “cheap holiday destinations” and be met with hundreds of videos pushing them to book flights to Albania and Montenegro. In 1995, Albania received 304 000 tourists and surpassed a staggering 7 million in 2022.

The appeal of such travel guides is easy to understand. In a world where tourists get sprayed with water out of spite, who wouldn’t want to blend in with the locals? The Leaning Tower of Pisa is great, but isn’t it so much more impressive for friends and family back home to tell them all about the “simply wonderful” botanical gardens that were “oh so peaceful” and where you enjoyed an “exquisite focaccia from a small bakery” far from the loud and cacophonous tourists? Most people would agree that a local, authentic experience will always render a trip more memorable.

Yet, if my jazz bar debacle made me realize anything, it’s that the people producing this travel content are… tourists. Of course, it’s possible and even very likely to, as a tourist, stumble onto some underground restaurant or shop. Most seasoned travellers have anecdotes which involve wandering into an encounter with some sweet grandparents who offered to share their dinner free of charge. But it’s the spontaneity of these events that make them such treasured memories. Planned authenticity is inherently inauthentic. TikTok travel guides, brought into excess, fuel both this and what can be called “performative travel,” where people visit places only for the pictures and their social media pages.

The fact remains, though, that social media can be an excellent source of inspiration to spice up the itinerary of a trip. I, for one, have found many new places in the cities I have lived in from local content creators. These pages are not as useful to tourists, though, who generally don’t come to Barcelona looking for the most original Japanese restaurants in the city.

At the end of the day, locals remain your best bet when it comes to asking for travel advice. No one knows the best bars and clubs like someone who has spent all of high school and university in a city. However, there’s nothing wrong with doing touristy things as a tourist. Nor is there anything wrong with going to that restaurant owned by an elderly couple your friend stumbled into while on holiday once. But give yourself the opportunity to make your own impromptu encounters, and leave room for spontaneity in between a sighting of the Statue of Liberty and a visit of the Met. After all, why should one local and independent jewelry maker you saw on social media be more worth of your time and money than another you chanced on meandering in the streets of Buenos Aires?