Current Consumers' Travel Decisions
- jbmehan29
- Nov 4, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 22, 2019
Travel influencers are dictating where we travel
Pretty much everyone I know is on some form of social media: my sister, my friends, my parents, and even my grandmothers. The fact that my grandmothers are on social media should be proof enough that social media has infiltrated everyone's life. However, if you don't believe me, just check out Statista’s website. According to Statista’s (2018) recent data, 77% of the U.S. population has some type of social media profile. The website also suggests that “the number of worldwide social media users reached 2.34 billion and is expected to grow to some 2.95 billion by 2020 (Statista, 2018). In other words, a crazy amount of people are using social media.
So, if billions of people are using social media, it must be having some effect on us, right? Well turns out, it is. Social media is having a massive impact on how consumers choose their travel destination. With thousands of influencers posting about their dreamy vacations, this makes total sense.
Or how about Alex’s and Marko, from The Vagabrothers, latest pictures from Sir Lanka?
After seeing someone else having an epic time on vacation, we suddenly want to vacation there two. Mollie and the Vagabrothers are having the time of their lives in Croatia and Sri Lanka, so if we go there, we should have the time of our life too, right? This is the mentality that has changed the way people choose their travel destinations. Social media has given people the ability to show off the best parts of their lives. As a result, people see those pictures and want to replicate them so they can be happy too, meaning we no longer sensibly choose where we vacation. Instead, we base it off of what looks the most fun according to the travel influencers we follow. Basic travel and hospitality advertisements no longer stand a chance.
National Geographic put it best when they said that “clearly we have an appetite for imagery, as its influencing our travel decisions” (Siemens, 2017, para. 3). This statement couldn’t be more true; however, I do want to add that we have an appetite for imagery and the feeling that comes along with that image. The feeling that one gets when they imagine what that experience would be like for them is what is currently driving travel decisions.
Just take this information found in the article mentioned above. National Geographic found that when “the tourism board of the small alpine town of Wanaka, New Zealand, began inviting and hosting “influencers”—social media trendsetters with large followings—to post about their adventures.The result was the fastest tourism growth in the country: a 14 percent increase”(Siemens, 2017, para. 5). People saw the travel influences' pictures and immediately wanted to replicate the experience they were having; the proof is in the numbers. It’s crazy how travel influencers are now the deciding factors of where consumers travel and where they decide to stay.
In addition, the article"How Social Media Is Changing the Travel Industry"states that “browsing the thousands of travel-themed boards—devoted to everything from London restaurants to brutalist architecture and quirky maps—is a rich source of inspiration (Samiljan, 2012, para. 20). Inspiration is something we crave. The images presented to us through social media are far more inspiring than the cold, calculated, and artificial advertisements that hotels and travel destinations produce.
For example, this advertisement seems impersonal, right?
However this image, taken by the travel influencer Where's Mollie, gives us a totally different feeling!
Travel influences’ content has more authenticity; we can relate to it, which may be why their content has the ability to inspire us so much more. So, in addition to imagery and our feelings towards a post, maybe inspiration dictates our travel too? Maybe that's another reason why social media and its influencers are drastically changing travel: because they are inspiring us in ways that other outlets never could.
Sources
Miller, C. (2017, January 6). How Instagram is Changing Travel. Retrieved from
Samiljan, T. (2012, June 20). How Social Media Is Changing the Travel Industry. Retrieved from
Statista (2018). Number of social network users worldwide from 2010 to 2021 (in billions). Retrieved from
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