Opinion
Remember ’70s slide nights? This is vastly more entertaining
Lee Tulloch
Travel columnistIf the future of travel belongs to the young, then it looks like a lot of fun.
Over on TikTok, my travel feed is full of young couples and friends making cute, choreographed reels of themselves, dancing, jumping, swaying and walking through spectacular landscapes to catchy tunes like Elvis Presley’s Burning Love.
TikTokers love to video themselves in each destination doing whatever is viral – slowly leaning sideways in unison has been trending lately – and then compile the videos into slick films, aided by the impressive technology on their phones.
About 42 per cent of Gen Z travellers and one in four millennials use TikTok to plan trips.Credit: Getty Images
They strive to make eye-catching “transitions,” such as walking through frames or magically changing outfits every few seconds. While there’s a lot of pressure to make amateur reels look as professional as those of the “travel content creators” who crowd TikTok with sponsored posts. There are also thousands of people happy just to be silly and awkward. It’s sweet.
When I was a child, I remember being forced to sit through the tedious slideshows the adults presented after their overseas trips. We’d sit restlessly in a darkened room as out of focus and poorly framed images clicked up on a wobbly pull-down screen. I hate to think how many hours of my childhood I lost waiting for upside-down slides to be extracted and replaced the correct way.
A modern version of the same thing, TikTok is vastly more entertaining. And, scrolling through videos of couples falling sideways in Alpine fields and besties fist-bumping against waterfalls in Cancun, actually made me hungry for more travel experiences. The joy is there.
Have TikTok, will travel.Credit: Getty Images
TikTok is designed for short attention spans, so there’s not a lot of solid information. It’s a shambolic potpourri of airports, passengers behaving badly, funny flight attendants, terrible airline food, toes by swimming pools, pretty skies and dance numbers.
There are also some useful, quirky travel hacks, such as wearing an Air Tag to avoid getting lost when separated from your friend.
And, as can be expected, there are many reels poking fun at older travellers. “Make sure you only travel in a group of 60 to 100 other Boomers. If you’re travelling to a developing nation, make sure you haggle and barter as much as possible.”
Lengthy holiday slideshows are now a thing of the past.Credit: Getty Images
Gen Z travellers have every reason to be smug now that the Boomer generation has begun to “age out” of travelling. (A nice way to put it.)
According to Deloitte’s recent report, “Facing Travel’s Future”, 42 per cent of Gen Z travellers and about one in four millennials use TikTok to plan trips, while only 7 per cent of Gen X and older users do this. Young travellers prefer creative videos and storytelling over still images.
Videos are much more relatable, especially when you’re following goofy young travellers who, like you, are flying overseas for the first time. Or you’re getting life advice from another 18-year-old who travels on the cheap by sleeping in airports. Or you’re glued to the adventures of a young Australian woman who can’t get tampons in Bali.
Older generations, raised on keeping their personal lives private at all costs, find it hard to understand why the youngest generations use social media as a confessional.
Deloitte projects that Gen Z and millennials will account for more than half of leisure trips in the US in summer 2030, up from about one-third last summer. The demands of younger, tech-savvy and conspicuously conscious younger generations will steadily become more prominent.
Boomers currently have a disproportionate share of wealth to pursue their bucket lists. Younger generations, with less spending power, travel more frequently, making shorter trips. Thirty per cent work on their holidays, reflected in the number of TikTok reels about how to blend work and travel on a shoestring, according to the report.
Younger generations are also embracing purposeful travel more than older generations. They are more sensitive to perceived authenticity, and increasingly align purchases and brand affinity with their values.
Travel is all about discovering destinations for yourself, so maybe all young travellers need is a bit of inspiration and undaunted positivity. I worry about the world being too depressing for them, but when I look at TikTok travel I see confidence and joyousness. Hopefully, TikTokers do more when they visit a country than practising their dance routines.
But maybe they’re not much different to the Boomers, who were once young backpackers and travelled lightly, with hunger for adventure.
Except they’re really “suitcasers” now.
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