Scrolling through Instagram, a sun-soaked beach in Byron Bay or a sweeping view over Uluru can spark more than just envy – it can change travel plans.
Social media influencers are not just inspiring wanderlust, they are tangibly shaping where and how people choose to travel, according to a new study.
“When influencer posts provide useful, factual information about destinations, they have the strongest impact on people’s desire to visit those places,” says author Naser Pourazad.
“The emotional appeal and engaging content also significantly influences whether people change their travel plans, want to purchase travel products or intend to visit destinations.
“Essentially, good information combined with compelling storytelling drives travel decisions.”
The study, published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, analyses how influencer content on Instagram affects people’s travel choices.
Using carefully created fake Instagram posts featuring real influencers Kane Vato and Elise Cook, Dr Pourazad and his team tested simulated posts across 10 Australian destinations including Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Hobart, the Kimberley and Byron Bay.
The point wasn’t to crown a winner.
“We deliberately kept the visual style and captions similar across all destinations to focus on how influencers work rather than which destinations are more appealing,” he explains.
“Our research design was specifically set up to isolate the influencer effect rather than measure destination performance differences.”
That effect, the study shows, is both rational and emotional.
On one hand, audiences treat influencers as information sources – people to turn to when researching and comparing trips. On the other, they can trigger what Dr Pourazad describes as an “impulse-buying effect”.
“Our findings show influencers impact both deliberate research and spontaneous inspiration,” he says.
“People use them as information sources when planning trips and also get emotionally inspired by their content.
That dual role – research tool and source of spur-of-the-moment desire – explains why influencers remain so powerful even as audiences become more sceptical about paid promotions.
Dr Pourazad’s survey tested whether people were put off when they recognised posts as advertising.
“We measured whether people recognised content as advertising and surprisingly found it only slightly reduced purchase intentions and didn’t significantly affect people’s desire to visit destinations or change travel plans,” he says.
“Interestingly, whilst recognising sponsored content doesn’t directly hurt travel decisions, it seems to establish a baseline level of transparency that actually helps other persuasive factors work more effectively.”
Another surprise was what mattered least. Identification with influencers – that sense of “being like them” or wanting to emulate their lifestyle – had less impact than ‘informativeness’ or persuasion.
“Our study used established travel influencers with large followings (over 100,000 followers each) but didn’t compare different sizes or types of influencer accounts,” Dr Pourazad notes.
“We focused on understanding the basic psychological mechanisms rather than examining how different influencer characteristics might change these effects, so we can’t say whether smaller or larger accounts would work differently.”
Controlling the experiment by using the fake posts meant eliminating the noise of trends, hashtags or viral moments and drilling down to the psychology of persuasion.
“Rather than looking at real-world examples of destinations becoming popular through Instagram, we focused on understanding the underlying psychology of how and why influencer content persuades people to travel,” he says.
It’s not just influencers shaping travel choices – popular culture is also having an impact.
Just as the latest season of Amazon’s The Summer I Turned Pretty was released, searches for Paris travel spiked.
Research by GamingGadgets.io found online searches for Flights to Paris jumped 260 per cent within 24 hours of the show’s ninth episode airing, while ‘Travel to Paris’ queries spiked 773 per cent.
These popular methods of holiday research may be assisting some Australians who appear to be going to great lengths to find destinations off the beaten track.
A separate survey commissioned by travel insurer Insure&Go found 66 per cent of Australians over 50 plan to seek out quieter, lesser-known destinations in the next two years, citing rising costs and over tourism as the main deterrents to visiting the world’s most popular hotspots.
Sixty per cent of respondents overall said they are less inclined now than five years ago to travel to iconic destinations like Rome, Tokyo or Phuket.
Two-thirds of over-50s will actively seek out alternatives and nearly a quarter say they will bypass tourist hotspots altogether.
“Our research indicates many travellers are done with crowds and queues,” says David Mayo, Commercial and Marketing Director at Insure&Go.
“There is a growing appetite for destinations that offer rich experiences but without the anxiety associated with congested sights and the fear of missing out in those scenarios.
Australians are now looking to places where they can holiday at a slower pace, immerse themselves in culture and stretch their budget further.”
When asked which alternatives most appealed, 51 per cent of respondents said small towns with a rich cultural heritage – places such as Matera in Italy, Ronda in Spain or Kotor in Montenegro.
Remote nature destinations followed at 43 per cent, while 42 per cent preferred lesser-known beach getaways.
The findings suggest a shift away from “bucket list” tourism and towards more meaningful, personal experiences.
“Our research indicates that travel, for many, is no longer about ticking off iconic sights but rediscovering the joy of discovery itself,” Mr Mayo says.