by Tanya
4-minute read
Social Media in Travel: A Double-Edged Smartphone
We were born in the advent of personal computers. As Generation X-ers, we are more familiar with Atari, floppy disks, and DVD players than emojis, reels, and hashtags. Our fondest childhood memories include walking over to the neighbor’s house next door, hanging out with friends at the local grocer, and playing outside. Rain, shine, or snow, it didn’t matter to us because we loved the outdoors. When we stayed in, by choice or otherwise, we built a fort, played board games, and watched television. Most activities were communal events back then.
Fast forward to the present day, we are a couple of middle-aged people witnessing technology changing at hyper-speed. Kids personally own a cellphone, and perhaps another mobile device or two. When the first cellphones came out, they were as heavy as a car battery and people were proud to lug them around all the time. Nowadays, mobile phones come in various sizes. They could be as light as a fairytale or as weighty as a well-fed wallet. Everything is done through a touchscreen, from gaming and shopping to conversations and relationships.
Travel hasn’t been left untouched by the technological transformation. In the past, we had to purchase paper plane tickets at an airline office and book tour packages at a travel agency. Vacation ideas come to us after rifling through brochures and receiving mailers. Inflight magazines enticed us to explore unfamiliar places on our next vacation while we were still on our way to the current one. Only cardboard menus and safety cards in the streamlined seatback pockets remain of that nostalgic past and leave traces of an industrial era.
The Power of the Smartphone
The digital age allows for ultra-convenience even with simple tasks. Need to find a place to stay? No problem! Siri and Alexa will come up with some options for you. Social media harness the power of the collective to provide answers to our questions. Although, some people seem to think Facebook groups function like Google Search. Members end up posting a search phrase in the group instead of a properly constructed paragraph on what they need help with. In travel, social media also make it easy for people to earn money. Influencers get free trips in exchange for glowing reviews on Instagram. Looking for places to discover? Content creators on YouTube regularly share recommendations and videos of beautiful destinations.
The flipside is that the pressure to primp and post is always on. Photo editing apps are selling like hotcakes. Tutorials on how to take riveting selfies abound. Services to boost likes and followers are on offer. Bots and fake accounts propagate comments online. Websites install apps (also called plugins) to make us believe that their pages are being shared 10x more than they actually are. Company stakeholders pretend to be someone else and leave supposedly independent, unbiased reviews of their establishment. In the midst of it all, our feeds are inundated with ads and sponsored posts each day. Has anyone noticed that a lot of times, a pop-up prompts us to subscribe when we’re on our way to close our internet browser? In this day and age, AI programs can track our taps and clicks to generate personalized advertising for us.
Let Your Thumbs Do the Walking
On the one hand, online platforms make it easy for us to keep up with the trends in travel. Up-to-date information on cool, new destinations is right at our fingertips. Social media in travel paved the way for more independence among a plethora of choices. These online platforms have empowered individuals to start up their own small businesses, presenting travelers with more affordable alternatives in some cases. Since the market has become more competitive, tour operators need to constantly innovate and come up with fresh concepts.
On the other hand, how much of what we see on social media is real? Do we care enough to sort through the tales to find the truth? How do we deal with the seeming lack of privacy and the constant pressure to be relevant? It’s a balancing act between the desire to share a great experience vis-a-vis leaving your hidden gem undiscovered. With the world getting smaller each day, it only takes one post for the community to know; and another one for the world to show up. How do we preserve pockets of paradise so that we can continue to enjoy them?
