How Millennials Are Travelling These Days Is Strange!

Most of the millennials love travelling. Also travelling is an option that most of the millennials are choosing as a career these days. One of the reasons for freelancing is that they get the freedom to schedule and control their work from anywhere, anytime. Guess wanderlust-ing is going well for them!

But there is something else they do which isn’t that great. Social media has a high impact on millennials these days. According to a study by Allianz Global Assistance, 36% of the millennials post misleading pictures of their travel stories. They do this to make things appear better than the reality.

Thanks to Facebook and Instagram, posting anything on social media is much easier today. Travellers use filters and other technologies like photoshop to make themselves look perfect. But why is it important to look perfect? What’s the problem in being imperfect?

The Answer To Why:

We cannot blame millennials for everything. I actually wanted to say, that we cannot blame millennials for being weird! (But I chose not to!)

Even before social media, only selected pictures were framed and put on the walls. People today want to show what a perfect life they are living. Umm.. who is interested in your life by the way? Reasons can be many for this wonderful feeling like earning money from social media or feeling of competitiveness with others.

Is it okay to call this a #FOMO?

It’s more like people are branding themselves. Depending on how many views they get on their videos, likes on their pictures or with the number of followers they have, they start “influencing” people. And all this becomes easy when everything is filtered, I mean fabulous.

When millennials see a deceptive picture on social media, they want to post a deceptive picture of their personal experience. So they pick an instagramable picture and post it. Can you imagine the amount of time they spend on clicking a picture or crafting the “perfect” picture to post on social media? The irony is that they caption the picture saying “Detoxifying and relaxing”. REALLY?

Travellers these days have the privilege to access information across the web like TripAdvisor reviews and Traveller’s Instagram pictures to plan their trip. Earlier travellers used to decide a destination, research about it, decide where to stay and then book the tickets. But today, they turn to “influencers” to plan a trip for themselves.

Let’s Talk Some Numbers, Shall We?

Let me tell you some weird facts about millennials who travel today.

• 30% of US travellers turn to social media for travel inspirations.
• 40% of UK millennials consider an ‘instagramable’ location when planning a trip.
• 74% of travellers use social media when on a vacation.
• 40% of travel bookings are done with a mobile device.
• 39% of travellers between an age group of 18-29 think that before going to a destination, its cool to check-in on social media handles.
• 46% of the travellers post hotel reviews AFTER returning from a vacation. 40% post attractions and activities reviews and 40% post restaurants reviews.

• 60% of travellers share pictures on social media while travelling. 97% of millennials do the same.

I want to meet the remaining 3% of the millennials

• Last but not least, 52% of people like facebook pages specific to a travel destination.

(Source for the above data: Crowdriff.com)

• 87% of millennials on Facebook say they use social media for travel inspiration.
• 20% use Pinterest and Twitter for the same.

So, technically we don’t know how to use social media in the right way.

Need help??

How Can You Use Social Media Rightly For Travel?

It’s not like social media is of no use to you if you are not posting pictures. It’s not only to post pictures and gather likes and comments. You can use social media to do a lot of logical things like connecting with hotels, travel agencies, local restaurants to make your travel easy and hassle-free. Contacting them on their social media handles can help you with all the information you need to plan your trip. This way you can decide on your budget and if you do the booking well in advance, you can have a lavish vacation.

Will the influencers do this for you??

You can consult them on what to pack for any particular location, what documents you need, what to do if you get stuck in the local customs.

This is where you can use social media!

Connect with travel bloggers, for travel tips, visa information and public transit.

Don’t get deluded by the representation of travel on social media. Instead, reach reliable sources of information and plan your trip. Usually what is in front of you is better than pictures!

Do let me know in the comments section what are your views about the same. I would love to hear from you.

Bon Voyage!