This was published 7 years ago
How to research your holiday on social media #travel
By Ben Groundwater
Researching your travels on social media can lead to unique experiences #unique.Credit: iStock
It's not to brag. If you're using social media purely as a way of boasting about where you are and what you're doing when you travel, then you're handling it wrong.
Social media for travellers is so much more. It's a research tool. It's a way of finding the best places to eat, to drink, to visit and explore. It's a booking agent. It's an interface between you and the travel brands you spend money with. Social media used right is far more effective than any guidebook or even travel agent could ever hope to be.
But you have to use it properly.
Instagram, for example, isn't just for humble brags about your #goodtimes. Though that's certainly part of it, travellers should be using the platform as much for gleaning tips and inspiration from others as sharing travel photos of their own.
At the inspiration stage of your travel planning, search hashtags like "travel" and "adventure" to find ideas for your next trip. Follow aggregator travel accounts such as @natgeotravel or @travellerau to discover places you might not have thought about visiting before.
Once you've decided on a destination, or even if you're already in that place, Instagram can be used as a way of finding out what there is to do. Search the hashtags of your city of choice, or use location searches to check out what's on offer around you. You'll discover the accounts of people who live in that place and know it well. After half an hour or so you'll be well down the rabbit hole, discovering restaurants and bars and attractions you never knew existed.
Instagram is especially good for food recommendations, given everyone's obsession with taking photos of their meals. Check out restaurants' location tags, or find local food bloggers' accounts, and you'll never eat badly again. In fact if you interact regularly with these people, and you'll even have friends to dine with in these foreign places.
But don't stop at Instagram. Facebook is another underutilised tool for travellers, who usually just use it as a means of communicating with family and friends, and posting those jealousy-inducing photos.
There's more to Facie for travellers. Start by "liking" the pages of airlines, hotel chains, hostels, tour operators and destinations that you're mostly likely to be interested in. This will ensure you're fed the latest information on sales, good deals, and anything new that's happening.
You can even make bookings with plenty of companies through Facebook, and receive discounts for doing so. It's also a portal to allow you to contact these companies or entities in the event you have any questions, or want to make a complaint. It's amazing how quickly issues are dealt with once they're in the public domain. Use that to your advantage.
It's a similar story with Twitter. Many a disagreement has been settled with an airline or hotel over Twitter. If you begin tweeting madly at whichever company you're in an argument with, most will just want to shut you up before you make too much of a public nuisance of yourself. Handy, though not something you want to overuse.
Another of Twitter's best functions is its use for crowd-sourcing information and travel tips. There's a whole world of people out there who would be only too happy to tell you the best attractions, or museums, or places to eat or drink or sleep. All you have to do is get in touch with them.
Even if you don't have thousands of followers to see your questions, use hashtags and interact with experts on there to help get the conversation started. You'll be inundated with information before you know it.
Of the other popular social media platforms, most are useful to travellers as a way of keeping in touch with people – whether that's friends and family back home, or fellow travellers that you want to meet up with again. The likes of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype are all ideal for coordinating plans with groups of people from all over the world, as well as reassuring your mum that you're OK after a few weeks of booze-fuelled silence.
Aside from those biggies, there are also thousands of smaller social media apps out there that travellers will either find fairly useful or a complete waste of time. It's a case of trial and error. From hooking up with other backpackers to travel with (Backpackr) to simply hooking up with other backpackers (Tinder); from curated attractions lists (Foursquare) to places to lay your head (Couchsurfing; Airbnb; TripAdvisor) – there's a social media app for pretty much any need.
Even occasionally bragging about the cool places you've been.
How do you use social media when you travel? What are you favourite apps?
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