Beyond the viral shot: how creators can help tackle overtourism
It’s the peak of the summer holidays. Out of office replies are on and your social media feed is saturated with iconic shots from Ibiza, St Tropez or the Amalfi Coast. But with the sunshine and the enviable social content comes the headlines of overtourism and the images of the queues waiting to take ‘that’ shot.
Social media has made the world easier to discover. A single photograph or video can introduce millions of people to a beach, restaurant, viewpoint or neighbourhood they might never have known existed. That power has transformed travel and hospitality marketing. Independent businesses can reach global audiences, overlooked destinations can attract new visitors and creators can make unfamiliar places feel accessible and exciting. But social media attention has proven itself to be a double-edged sword for some destinations and small businesses.
One particular street, café, beach or viewpoint becomes the place everyone feels they need to visit. Queues form for the same photograph, local businesses become overwhelmed, and people spend more time recreating an image they’ve already seen than experiencing the destination around them. The result can be frustrating for residents, visitors and creators alike.
From discovery to oversaturation
From the canals of Venice to the heights of Machu Picchu, those iconic shots which once inspired bucket list destinations people could only dream of, now represent overcrowded sunset viewpoints or hours-long queues for the exact table, doorway or staircase that has appeared repeatedly across global feeds.
This behaviour is understandable and one many of us have been guilty of ourselves. Social media is the new postcard, offering a window to a world far from our own day-to-day lives, and creators are the senders, conveying the beauty of those places in a single moment or scene captured on their grids. People naturally want to experience those sights for themselves and capture their own version of that image. You could call them content tourists, visitors inspired by creators. It’s the replication effect: one compelling piece of creator content can inspire hundreds, sometimes thousands of visitors to recreate the same moment.
However, once everyone is producing the same picture in the same place, the content begins to lose what made it special and interesting in the first place.
Creators and content tourists might get the shot, but there’s little sense of discovery or personal perspective. The destination becomes reduced to a handful of familiar images, while the broader area and the surrounding businesses receive little attention and may even suffer from the oversaturation of their locale without the benefits of any of the attention bleeding over to them.
Viral attention has real consequences
Becoming the place to go can bring enormous commercial benefits, but can also create pressure that a location was never designed to absorb. Small businesses can struggle to serve sudden volumes of visitors. Residents can find familiar places harder to access. Traffic, queues, and noise increase, while the character that made the area appealing begins to change.
The visitor experience suffers too. A picturesque spot seen online can feel very different when people are waiting behind one another to recreate the same image. The focus shifts from enjoying the place to a tick box of getting your own version of a piece of content, very much Instagram vs Reality.
This doesn’t mean creators should stop featuring popular destinations. Many places depend heavily on tourism and benefit enormously from creator coverage, but there’s an opportunity to think more carefully about how that attention is directed.
Creators can widen the map
One of the most valuable things a creator can offer is genuine discovery and a sense of curiosity. A well-known destination will almost always contain neighbourhoods, independent businesses, landscapes and stories that haven’t received the same attention as its most recognisable landmarks. Seeking those out can make the content more interesting while helping to spread the benefits of tourism more widely.
A creator visiting a popular island might feature the quieter town beyond the main resort. A food creator could look past the restaurant appearing in every guide and introduce audiences to another local business doing something equally distinctive. A travel account might show how to experience a destination at a different time of day, in another season or from a perspective that feels less familiar.
This approach creates more original work because the creator has something new to say. It also helps audiences discover places that may suit them better than the heavily promoted hotspot. For businesses outside the established visitor trail, one thoughtful recommendation can have a meaningful impact.
Originality has commercial value
There’s also a strong creator-brand reason to look beyond the obvious. When every creator produces the same content from the same place, audiences have fewer reasons to distinguish between them. The image may perform because the location is recognisable, but it does little to establish the creator’s own voice or value.
Original discovery demonstrates taste, curiosity and expertise. It gives followers a reason to return because they trust that the creator will show them something they haven’t already seen repeatedly. That kind of credibility is valuable to brands and destinations too. Tourism organisations, hotels and local businesses need creators who can tell a broader story, introduce different parts of a place and help shape visitor behaviour more thoughtfully.
The creator becomes more than someone documenting what is already popular. They become someone capable of influencing where attention moves next.
Destinations and brands have a role to play
Creators can only widen the story if they’re given the information and access to do so. Tourism organisations, hospitality brands and local businesses often promote the same landmarks because they’re easy to recognise and already known to perform well. That can reinforce the concentration of visitors in a small number of places.
A stronger creator brief might highlight emerging neighbourhoods, quieter periods, lesser-known businesses or different ways to experience the destination. Local insight can help creators identify stories that aren’t obvious from a quick online search.
This benefits the destination by spreading visitor spend, reducing pressure on overwhelmed locations and creating a richer picture of what the area has to offer. It benefits the creator by providing more distinctive material and a stronger reason for audiences to engage. The best work usually comes from collaboration rather than simply inviting someone to reproduce the same established image.
Better influence means better choices
Creators have become an important part of how people decide where to go, what to see and which businesses to support. With that influence comes the ability to broaden horizons rather than narrow them.
Popular locations will always attract attention, and there’s nothing wrong with featuring them. The opportunity lies in showing what else is there, encouraging people to explore more widely and reminding audiences that a destination is rarely defined by one photograph.
At United Influence, the focus is on helping brands, destinations and creators build partnerships with greater depth and purpose. That includes identifying stories with real substance, finding new angles and creating content that delivers commercial value while respecting the places and communities being featured.
The strongest travel and lifestyle content doesn’t simply confirm what everyone already knows. It gives people a reason to look again, explore further and discover something new.
For destinations and hospitality brands looking to work with creators more strategically, or creators wanting to build a more distinctive point of view, United Influence can help shape partnerships that spread attention, create stronger stories and deliver better results.