Who has never looked for a place on Instagram before planning a vacation or an excursion? And especially if you are looking for a place for a special moment… If the photos posted on social networks can be considered an effective tool for promoting tourist places, some photographs would make them less attractive in the eyes of the public, reports a study published in July 2023 in the journal ResearchGate.
“We want to stand out by being a little different”
According to the study, when a person is planning a trip or looking for a location for a special celebration — such as a wedding or honeymoon — seeing a photograph of other people enjoying the location makes the destination less attractive to them.
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If my cousin saw a photo of my husband proposing to me in a national park, for example, he would worry that choosing that same location to propose to his partner would make him seem boring.
Choosing a vacation spot, a territorial question?
Several experiments were conducted—six studies in total were conducted by Zoe Y. Lu and her colleagues—to understand why and how the presence of other people in a place could alter the image it conveys.
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One such experiment, conducted online, asked 416 participants to choose between two hiking trails—Trail A and Trail B—on New Year’s Day. When no people appeared on either trail, Trail A was more popular with participants. But if there was a hiker in the photo of Trail A (but not in the photo of Trail B), Trail A’s rating dropped significantly.
“Our theory is that the hiker in the image is providing some kind of territorial signal,” explains Zoe Y. Lu.
This sends a signal to our personal identity: “Someone else has been here, don’t attempt their hike, try a hike that no one else seems to have done.”
Rethinking tourism marketing strategies
Similar conclusions were reached in a second experiment, in which participants had to choose between location A and location B for celebrate their wedding. If neither photo showed another couple getting married, 53% of participants chose location A. But if another couple appeared in the photo at location A, and not location B, only 27% of participants chose location A.
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In contrast, it did not appear to have an impact if participants chose a wedding venue for a third party. “Wedding planners are not looking for a personal identity (in the venue, editor’s note) as their clients would,” specifies the researcher.
“This research is the first to study the impact of human presence in shared photos through the lens of psychological ownership and the identity signaling function of ownership.”the study’s researchers say. These findings could lead to changes in tourism marketing strategies. Rather than inviting influencers to take pictures of themselves on-site or multiplying the number of photographs of customers in their brochures, hotels and tourist destinations could soon turn to shots devoid of any human presence.
