3 Things Tourism Brands Get Wrong on Social Media

The way people discover places has quietly changed. Here’s what we’re telling every tourism client right now, and what most destinations still get wrong.

Stop counting followers.

A large following used to be a reasonable proxy for reach and influence. It isn’t anymore. Platforms increasingly show content to people who don’t follow you yet — your own follower count says less and less about how many people will actually see, and act on, your next post. Chasing follower growth as a goal in itself is chasing the wrong number.

Pretty isn’t enough.

Beautifully shot, polished content used to be a differentiator. Now it’s the baseline — every destination has access to a decent camera and a Lightroom preset. What sets content apart today is intention: knowing exactly who a piece of content is for, what it’s meant to make them feel, and what you want them to do next. A gorgeous photo with no strategic reason behind it performs about as well as a mediocre one.

Your best content team is already on the ground.

The people who work at your visitor centre, run your tours, and staff your events are sitting on the most authentic content most destinations aren’t capturing. Real moments with real travellers, filmed as they happen, consistently outperform staged shoots — because audiences can tell the difference. If your content strategy relies entirely on scheduled photo days, you’re missing the version of your destination that actually convinces people to visit.

None of this is about posting more. It’s about creating content with intention and knowing exactly what you’re doing before you publish — not filling a calendar and hoping something lands.

Which of these do you think the tourism industry still gets wrong most often? We’d genuinely like to know.