Travel Brands Play It Safe on Social With Popular Attractions, Not Local Experiences
Photo Credit: Travel brands are having trouble showing how to live like a local on social media. Pictured is a family playing on a street in Havana, Cuba, a common activity among locals throughout the city. Skift / Dan Peltier
Skift Take
Many travel brands argue that they're all about helping travelers explore destinations from new angles that get them into local lives and surrounded by local communities. Traveler behavior definitely reflects this to some extent in cities throughout the world, but many brands' social media channels don't echo these scenes and instead push safer shots of familiar destinations.
Hotels, destinations, and even some airlines have converged on the theme that travelers want to live like locals and have unique experiences, and places and brands have doubled down on this marketing message in recent years.
But it's challenging to portray local life and experiences through an Instagram photo, Facebook post, Tweet, or Snapchat video, though the latter has considerably helped some travel brands such as Airbnb and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts tell more engaging stories. While most brands say they want their guests and visitors to see a destination for what it really is, their social media teams are struggling to show this and in many cases their Instagram and Facebook feeds, for example, don't reflect scenes beyond popular tourist areas.
A quick browse through any given travel brand's Instagram feed — the most photo-centric and one of the world's most-used and fastest-growing social channels — reveals dozens or hundreds of iconic landscape shots, such as t
