New Zealand asks us to stop traveling as 'influencers'
New Zealand has tired of clone travelers who upload photos repeated a thousand times to social networks. The oceanic country has proposed to put a stop to it to posturing tourism with a request for aspiring influencers who perpetuate traced poses and identical frames in the usual scenarios.
The bell Traveling under the social influence developed by new zealand tourism parody strip for decongest its most popular tourist attractions and promote visits to other sites less coveted by instagrammers. His three ads have gone viral far beyond the islands.
FOR A HANDFUL OF LIKES
In this trilogy of videos, the comedian Thomas Sainsbury puts on a ranger uniform and puts himself at the service of the Social Observation Squad , a special brigade that persecutes those who replicate hackneyed behaviors on social networks.
Traveling under the social influence
Sainsbury's patrols New Zealand's most famous locations to catch offenders taking overly typical photos. "We've seen all this before," the agent scolds them. “ We've all seen it before”.
The comedian makes fun of the most reproduced tendencies: trampling lavender fields, raising your arms to the sky on the edge of a cliff, walking in the middle of a highway... The numbers support this mockery: the 70,000 photos of Roys Peak (Wanaka) uploaded to Instagram look eerily alike.
The Insta Repeat account has been denouncing the lack of originality of travelers for some time, and a couple of years ago it they uncovered the tricks of users who manipulate reality in pursuit of the perfect snapshot.
Precisely at Roys Peak it is common to find the “ social media queue ”, the hidden face of the walk to the summit. Phenomena like this have led New Zealand to shout to the world that there is much to see in the country beyond the dictates of hashtags.
The 70,000 photos of Roys Peak on Instagram (all the same) are proof of the obvious: the traveler is less and less original
A CAMPAIGN MADE BY KIWIS AND FOR KIWIS
This campaign is the successor of a previous one called do something new , which was launched in May 2020 to invite New Zealanders to visit the lesser known places of your land.
In 2021 Tourism New Zealand asks its inhabitants, the kiwis , that they get out of the common places and, incidentally, upload their most original images to the networks.
“Recommendations from friends and family are highly influential in travel decisions, so by encouraging Kiwis to share new activities or experiences in New Zealand, we inspire larger audiences to do something new too ", Explain Bjoern Spreitzer, Director General of the New Zealand Domestic Department of Tourism.
“Kiwis are our best tourism promoters,” says Spreitzer. At the end of February, the ten most original photos with the hashtag #DoSomethingNewNZ will be awarded with a NZ$500 coupon to travel around the country.
MESSAGES THAT CROSS CLOSED BORDERS TO THE WORLD
Although humor has propelled its global repercussion, the ads are aimed at domestic travelers who will be touring their country this summer due to coronavirus restrictions . Right now you can't freely enter or leave New Zealand.
Virality has put the campaign in the spotlight, and for that reason it has not been spared reproaches. The portal Skift criticizes that “it evokes more mixed feelings than approval. It's a fine line between genius and callousness in the current context of global tourism”.
These announcements come when the oceanic country seems to have recovered the “old” pre-coronavirus normality , while the rest of the world looks with open mouths and high levels of envy at the images of the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at a massive barbecue during a national holiday without safety distances or masks.
Ardern herself has confirmed that New Zealand will keep its borders closed most of the year , although it will allow "air bubbles" with Australia and other Pacific territories.
The president has declared that “ New Zealand will feel like it's truly back to normal when there's some level of normalcy in the rest of the world.".