Just a few years ago, Albania would have been an exclusive tourist destination. But this summer, the perpetual search for hidden and cheap corners brought an avalanche of visitors to its beaches with crystal clear waters. He even jumped into controversy after a group of influencers They will criticize the country as a tourist destination. Their cry: the place was not as idyllic as what they had seen on TikTok. The irony is that they arrived precisely attracted by other people’s videos. influencers.
A recent study reflects how the video platform can cause a sudden increase in the number of visitors to a certain place. Unlike other social networks, research indicates, TikTok promotes those that generate many interactions at once. This can facilitate the sudden popularity of a destination and, therefore, cause saturation problems in sites sized for a much smaller influx.
Among the aspects that differentiate TikTok from other social networks are its virality and its type of audience. “One of the key factors of TikTok is the audience it manages, which is younger. Destinations that can be classified as cheaper and easier to access for the population are more adapted to the public of this social network,” says Jennifer Mourenza, digital marketing specialist at AccuraCast.
The impact, however, also occurs in other layers of the population. 35% of users of this social network in the United States traveled to a new site after seeing it in a TikTok video, according to a report from the marketing agency specialized in tourism MGH. Of course, the percentage rises to 45% in those between 25 and 44 years old.
It is difficult to know how many people arrive through TikTok to destinations that are fashionable on this social network, such as Albania, whose growth in the tourism sector is indisputable. The country experienced an increase in foreign visitors from 26% during July, compared to the previous year’s figures. An increase that is more noticeable outside of the central summer months. In September, 45% more international tourists arrived, in total 1.1 million (more than a third of the local population), while Last January, visits increased by 94%, according to the Albanian Statistical Institute. In the first nine months of the year, the country had 29% more visitors than in the same period of 2022.
But the study published by Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism has found correlations between numbers on TikTok and data on the ground, on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. There, the largest mountain in the world Jianfengling National Park It went from receiving 50 visitors in January 2021 to around 400-600 as of the following month. That happened after the publication of a video on TikTok that showed the view from the enclave, with a spectacular sunrise emerging from a sea of clouds, and which received 65,000 likes. Two other points of interest, near the Daguangba Reservoir, also suddenly became popular after a video garnered 29,000 likes.
“TikTok’s algorithm is different and is more suitable for spreading videos to many people. Stronger virality is achieved. TikTok generates waves of popularity that there are not on Instagram,” says Jerome Bergerou, Mourenza’s colleague and international director at the AccuraCast agency. Both mention the case of the Cornish beaches, which they know closely because their headquarters are in London. During the pandemic, visits to this coastal area skyrocketed. “Videos were published that are extremely striking, showing spectacular beaches that are in England and that were totally unknown to people. And there was a viral effect,” says Mourenza.
After the confinement in the United Kingdom, the influx of tourists seeking sun and sand in Cornwall ran away. Unraveling which of these tourists came through TikTok and whether they really constituted a significant number is not an easy task. Especially at a time when tourism retreated to the interior of countries to the detriment of international destinations. Although it seems clear that Cornwall’s beaches are popular on TikTok today, whether you look at information from local newspaper CornwallLive like the 26.7 million views that the hashtag accumulates #cornwallbeaches.
Although tourism is usually welcomed as an engine of economic prosperity, these sudden growths have counterparts. The study on the TikTok effect on the development of tourist destinations highlights that the massive and unexpected arrival of visitors caused problems of congestion, crowds and pollution.
On the consequences that an unforeseen increase in visitors can have, Pedro Bravo, journalist and author of the essay on mass tourism Excess baggage (Debate), points out some keys: “There are public services prepared to serve a certain number of the population that suddenly find themselves saturated. And by public services we can understand everything from water to cleaning, security or garbage collection. “This continues to happen even in historically saturated places, such as the Balearic Islands.”
In the places studied on the island of Hainan, the lack of organized transportation within the national park was evident with the avalanche of visitors. Also the absence of hiking routes and the impact that private vehicles had: more traffic and less safety on the narrow mountain roads. Likewise, researchers noted a lack of public toilets, trash cans, and eating and drinking facilities.
Environmental problems also appear, due to greater generation of waste and, in many cases, greenhouse gases, according to Bravo. Furthermore, if there is no established hotel infrastructure, accommodation for tourist use will proliferate, making housing more expensive for the local population. “These are the same problems that arise with mass tourism. They appear even in places theoretically accustomed to mass tourism, such as the Balearic Islands, Amsterdam, Venice, Madrid or Barcelona. Imagine if you are not even prepared and all of this comes to you suddenly,” the author emphasizes.
Places like the Cornish beaches either those of Albania They are already showing symptoms of overcrowding. Bravo points out, in any case, that the process differs between a country and a specific place, since the influx of tourists on a national scale requires a prior plan and state involvement. “In the case of countries, normally before a wave of tourism comes, the tourist infrastructure has been put in place to make it happen. Hotels are needed. For more planes to come there must be negotiations with the airlines and for the flights to be cheap, the slots reserved for the airlines have to be cheap. Tourist agencies also have to put it in their catalog and make price offers. All this has happened before the first one comes. tiktoker“, Explain.
Then comes the promotion of the destination, which, why not, could happen on TikTok. In 2022, the travel portal Breaking Travel News highlighted Albania’s explosive popularity on TikTok that summer. However, as AccuraCast points out, it is difficult to know if there is paid content behind it or not. They detail that there are two ways to advertise. The first is direct, with ads. “The other is more effective. It consists of using influencers to generate content about the tourist destination. These influencers are supposed to declare that they receive money for promoting this destination, but many times this is not done and it is not always clear which content is paid and which is organic,” says Bergerou.
In Albania, what is clear is that there has previously been airport planning. In 2021 it opened its second international airport, in Kukes, apart from the one the capital, Tirana, already had. And indeed there are plans to build two more in the tourist areas of Saranda and Vlora.
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