TikTok and the travel experience
Using TikTok when you travel can impact your experiences. GenX is the fastest growing cohort on TikTok, and TikTok is one of the world’s most influential platforms for travel inspiration. Yet few people have researched how it impacts their travel experiences. I made a small start on thinking about this on my travels in 2025. The key findings were:
- It was an enjoyable creative outlet. The platform enabled me to edit visuals and set them to music in a way that I experienced as intense self-expression, where there was no wrong or right way to do it, but rather a freedom of expression, in direct contrast to my professional life at home.
- I was building a persona. In examining my own motives for the trip and sharing it through TikTok, I wanted to be seen as an expeditionary adventurer and early adopter amongst my friends. Considering how people would consume my experiences influenced decisions about what I did and how I captured it.
- It created a time impost on the holiday. It took about an hour to produce each 1 minute-long TikTok, however a shorter capture of one moment without production or music received more views.
- I thought differently about how I viewed a place – I adopted a ‘TikTok Gaze’. In seeing a magnificent view, I would instantly think about how I could pan/zoom most effectively to capture the mood, the intricacy or the beauty of the place.
- I generated a lot more video content. Recognising it was good to give myself some options, I started creating far more content than I would have otherwise. I sequenced events to look like a day, but usually over a few days, to capture a more idealistic, but more consumable and (I thought) interesting.
There is a lot more to understand about how generating video content for sharing impacts the visitor experience generally and more research is needed. Read below for the full discussion.
Full discussion:
It has been well documented that TikTok and the short form video production it enables is changing the face of travel, both in terms of influence and destination management and traveller behaviour. With over 1 billion users accumulated since its global launch in 2018 (TikTok 2024), the platform is increasing in influence at an exponential rate. Skift reports that in 2022, around 34% of travellers were influenced by TikTok (Borko 2023). More recently, in Europe 78% of users indicated that TikTok played a role in travel discovery and inspiration, a figure reflected in the Americas and Asia Pacific audiences (TikTok 2024).
Academia has kept pace with this growth. A Google Scholar search for ‘TikTok travel’ yields over 15,000 results since 2023, with a flood of articles considering its influence on consumer behaviour (eg. Melati, Fathorrahman et al. 2022, Wang, Yu et al. 2022, Zhu, Hoc Nang Fong et al. 2022, Zhou, Sotiriadis et al. 2023), destination management and development (Wengel, Ma et al. 2022), and the visitor experience (Du, Liechty et al. 2022).
Notwithstanding this volume of work, Wei, Li et al. (2023) identify that there is a lack of discussion on how tourists interact with TikTok. Further, there is a dearth of discussion on TikTok beyond Generation Z (born since 1995), where the platform’s influence is most powerful (Howarth 2024). This is understandable, Generation X (born 1965-79) are often discounted in marketing as their purchasing power will soon be eclipsed by the larger and more influential generations that have been born since. However more than 60% of Gen Xers are booking vacations, a higher percentage than any other generation (Maglione 2024), and this is likely to increase as they move to retirement age.
Although Gen Xers are not intuitively drawn to the TikTok platform, preferring Pinterest or Facebook, recent articles are suggesting that Gen X is the fastest growing demographic on TikTok, representing around 28% of all users (Wavemaker 2023). These trends indicate that there is a need for academia to consider more carefully the influence of TikTok on Gen X behaviour. This study makes a humble start to that journey by documenting my own travels as a ‘Gen Xer’ attempting to share my experiences on the TikTok platform over a period of five weeks during a trip from Australia to the United Kingdom, Türkiye and Greece with a range of different travel purposes throughout the duration.
Ultimately an editing and sharing tool, TikTok enables the user to compile a short form video production with still shots and video shorts that can be cut down, sped up, slowed down to a sound track, typically of up to 1 minute in length. This made it an ideal tool to create compilations of holiday views that were easily digestible by friends and family at home online. I tried documenting the trip solely on TikTok but soon realised few of my friends were viewing it. Posting the TikTok link on Facebook and Instagram still did not yield many views, as some were reluctant to download a new platform, so I eventually started downloading the video of the TikTok to share on Facebook and Instagram, with a link to the TikTok if people were interested. Eventually, after a number of these posts, some of my friends went to TikTok to view them, as the quality was superior in the native platform. Below are links to some of the TikToks from the trip:
- London
- Istanbul
- Athens
In creating these TikToks, I made a number of observations about my own behaviour and how it impacted my travelling companion and friends at home. These are my preliminary observations:
- It was an enjoyable creative outlet. The platform enabled me to edit visuals and set them to music in a way that I experienced as intense self-expression, where there was no wrong or right way to do it, but rather a freedom of expression, in direct contrast to my professional life at home.
- I was building a persona. In examining my own motives for the trip and sharing it through TikTok, I wanted to be seen as an expeditionary adventurer and early adopter amongst my friends. Considering how people would consume my experiences influenced decisions about what I did and how I captured it.
- I enjoyed the positive real-time feedback. Friends and family provided instant positive feedback, and a number of people indicated that they would consider travelling to these places they had not previously known about.
- Time impost on the holiday. It took about an hour to produce each 1 minute-long TikTok, however a shorter capture of one moment without production or music received more views.
- I thought differently about how I viewed a place – I adopted a ‘TikTok gaze’. In seeing a magnificent view, I would instantly think about how I could pan/zoom most effectively to capture the mood, the intricacy or the beauty of the place.
- I generated a lot more video content. Recognising it was good to give myself some options, I started creating far more content than I would have otherwise. I sequenced events to look like a day, but usually over a few days, to capture a more idealistic, but more consumable and (I thought) interesting.
- I learnt to let go of perfection. As I went on, I learnt more and more to trust my instincts and make quick decisions based on an instant feeling.
- I annoyed and delighted my partner. My partner grew tired of stopping for a quick video capture, but also expressed delight each time a TikTok was produced of the journey.
On balance, the TikTok Travel experience was a positive one for me, and I plan to produce more, although at some stage I may tire of it. The TikTok became my visual journal for the trip, and I value the record it made and the creative process of journalling in a platform that provides real-time feedback. A full analysis in line with the literature of these observations is the next step in this study.
Reference list
Borko, S. H., Dawit (2023) TikTok Chips Awat at Google’s Dominance in Travel Discovery. Skift
Du, X., et al. (2022). "‘I want to record and share my wonderful journey’: Chinese Millennials’ production and sharing of short-form travel videos on TikTok or Douyin." Current Issues in Tourism 25(21): 3412-3424.
Howarth, J. (2024). "TikTok User Age, Gender & Demographics (2024)." Exploding Topics. Retrieved 30 September 2024, 2024, from https://explodingtopics.com/blog/tiktok-demographics#tiktok-demographic-data.
Maglione, A. (2024) Generation X travel trends: A look into generational travel behaviours.
Melati, N. L. P. K., et al. (2022). "The influence of instagram, tiktok travel influencers and city branding on the decision to choose a tourist destination (case study on@ backpackertampan in bali)." Journal of Business on Hospitality and Tourism 8(1): 267-289.
TikTok (2024). "TikTok Insights." Retrieved 30 September 2024, 2024, from https://www.tiktok.com/business/en-AU/insights?ab_version=experiment_2&agp_template_id=7400238737994547218.
TikTok (2024). "TikTok World 2024: New Ad Solutions to Harness Creativity, Entertainment and Performance." Retrieved 30 September 2024, 2024, from https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-world-2024
Wang, X., et al. (2022). "Visiting intentions toward theme parks: do short video content and tourists’ perceived playfulness on TikTok matter?" Sustainability 14(19): 12206.
Wavemaker (2023). "Wavemaker unveils first-of-its-kind global research into Gen X on social." Thought leadership. Retrieved 30 September, 2024, from https://wavemakerglobal.com/genx-report.
Wei, M., et al. (2023). "How values are co-created by tourists and TikTok that are conducive to destination promotion: Evidence from Chongqing." Journal of Vacation Marketing: 13567667231210591.
Wengel, Y., et al. (2022). "The TikTok effect on destination development: Famous overnight, now what?" Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism 37: 100458.
Zhou, Q., et al. (2023). "Using TikTok in tourism destination choice: A young Chinese tourists' perspective." Tourism Management Perspectives 46: 101101.
Zhu, C., et al. (2022). "How does celebrity involvement influence travel intention? The case of promoting Chengdu on TikTok." Information Technology & Tourism 24(3): 389-407.