The "best" tourist destinations: what you need to know about tourist fraud on TikTok
It will come as no surprise that bloggers on social media love to compare the "best places" and "hidden gems" for tourists. Today, TikTok users can find at least 6.5 billion views of the #dupe hashtag and people who have made a career out of deception on the platform.
"Destination dupes" is a substitution of a popular and crowded destination for a similar but less promoted one. Although speculation on this topic began long before the advent of TikTok, it is on this platform that this topic has become a real trend. InsideHook explains how not to get caught by unscrupulous bloggers and which destinations are not really worthy of attention.
According to a joint report by Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo, destinations such as Paros (instead of Santorini), Curacao (instead of St. Martin), Liverpool (instead of London), Palermo (instead of Lisbon), and Quebec (instead of Geneva) have seen a significant increase in the number of searches over the past year.
The probable reason for this popularity is TikTok posts. Although they are not harmful or completely unjustified, they are still not able to compete 100% with their key opponents.
In addition, social networks have the influence to make really good places look worse than they are, and vice versa, to glorify places that are not worth it. In this way, bloggers artificially create excessive tourism, which was particularly prevalent last year in Venice and Bali.
Of course, these are really great places, but they don't need to be overly publicized. Whereas really beautiful places that are not so popular are really worthy of the attention of tourists and influencers on TikTok.