Hidden Gems Are Ruining Travel

[0:00] Hidden gems are ruining travel. We've all been there. We've done the search on Google. We've heard the travel recommendations to visit this spot, which is a hidden gem. We get there. There are either thousands of people already in the same spot in a clearly over touristy location, or on the opposite side of the spectrum,

[0:19] there is no one there, and maybe sometimes not even the place that we were told to go to existing. We love this idea of hidden gems, though. Why? Because it makes us feel like we're discovering something special, something untouched and something truly unique. So we feel different for discovering it.

[0:38] But what happens when millions of people are all searching for the same hidden places at the same time? In tourism, language has power in many ways. And the term hidden gem might actually be contributing to overtourism and definitely misaligned travel expectations. Today's episode, we're going to unpack why the words we use matter, especially in travel,

[1:04] and investigating why hidden gems are ruining travel.

[1:29] So then you may be asking now, after all of this, so Kiara, if hidden gems are hurting travel and places and pushing...

[1:43] it now gets applied to places that are no longer hidden at all. And from Bali to European towns, locations are repeatedly labeled as hidden gems just to get the clickbait from tourists to increase their visits, but then also to improve their visibility in the tourism market.

[2:05] So some of you might even be asking, where did the term hidden gem even come from?

[2:33] But SEO really is what started at the root of the problem, because social media was rewarding keywords that helped attract clickbait, such as hidden gems in the headline for writing, because they were performing so well, and because of increasing the discovery among search. So because of this,

[2:53] places that were once quiet were then repackaged as this really hidden destination that you must visit, and now acting as a travel hook to get the tourist into the location. So that's really where it comes from. But I want to go now back to what I said at the beginning, in terms of why do we care?

[3:13] Why do travelers crave discovery over understanding? Now, human psychology favors novelty. We're always kind of attracted to the unknown, or maybe the different parts that we don't fully understand. We want to seek that understanding. And we talked about this in one of my previous episodes and my own experience in

[3:32] India, in that we seek to categorize different situations, places, people, etc., into these categories that are in our psychology in order to process and make sense of the observations and content that we're consuming. So going into the human psychology for hidden gems, travelers are often seeking those secrets that make them feel like that they knew

[3:56] about something first. Like, this is new, I discovered it, and therefore I'm super cool. And social media today actually amplifies this to this day. We are catering to the short attention spans and the dopamine loops that reinforce the novelty before the context. And going back to my marketers,

[4:16] you know, it's that quick second hook that we have to now include into any content we're creating in order to rank higher in the algorithms and to keep people looped into content. YouTube even mentions this and how creators should structure their long-form content.

[4:31] We have to maybe reorder the way we put our videos just so that we can have these little teaser moments throughout the entire episode to keep people engaged. So essentially putting hidden gems within the long-form content to keep people intrigued and wanting to know more. See the connection? And on the flip side of this,

[4:52] for places that may actually genuinely still be hidden gems, what happens now in social media when places are deemed as hidden gems by influencers or people online, they go viral. And this sends a mass amount of traffic to places that have zero preparedness for mass visitation. And it's not because they're special, but let's be real,

[5:16] some of these places are truly special and hidden gems that deserve the attention that they get from the exposition on social media, but because of the momentum of shares and likes and comments, etc., that the algorithm rewards, now this can be a good thing, because we're

[5:35] giving business to places that we're not getting a lot, which can help with refueling the economy, keeping them in business, etc. But at the same time, when they have zero preparedness, that can cause other problems. And the other thing is what we also see in the comments section is then people

[5:53] maybe not being happy for revealing this hidden spot that was once known, only kept amongst locals. And there's even tours, agencies, etc., that will take visitors to certain locations or experiences and ask that they don't record, or maybe they don't share it, because they want to keep it hidden,

[6:13] but in the sense to protect it from being damaged because of the mass tourism or the zero-to-100 experience that social media can bring. So hidden gems can sometimes have some good to it, but the overwhelming amount of overtourism that usually accompanies this new clickbait of hidden gems tends to outweigh the positive.

[6:36] And so this is really where hidden gems comes from, and really the context of some of the effects of deeming something as a hidden gem, whether it's actually a hidden gem or not, online and in social media. So the result is essentially something that becomes called a hidden gem, often stops being one, at least in practice.

[6:58] Now, moving into when the discovery now turns into damage, right, because I had mentioned that there are pros with this, but then there are also a lot of cons that come with that label. So once places become a labeled hidden gem, what really happens?

[7:19] It often obviously increases the amount of visits, attraction, and volume of people going to this destination, or maybe booking that one hotel in Bali or going on this secret hike to the pyramids. So these places once had manageable numbers to help ensure safety, protection, and non-damage up to the sites or experiences. Now they have to find mass coverage, get more employees, expand, etc.,

[7:43] in order to find that balance to make sure that they're still hitting certain criteria of safety and preservation. Or a lot of the times they can't accompany the large mass volumes. So then we just see the flip side of it, where people are in unsafe situations or there are protected sites getting damaged, etc.

[8:03] Case studies show villages that once drew 12 visitors per day, suddenly facing hundreds per week after one video. This really speaks to the power of social media, good and bad. So going into the human psychology for hidden gems, travelers are often seeking those secrets that make them feel like that they knew about something first,

[8:27] like this is new, I discovered it, and therefore I'm super cool. And social media today actually amplifies this to this day.

[8:57] Resources become strains, so especially in locations where water is in scarce supply, you might see then some locations not being able to have tap water or even electricity. I've been in places where just electricity is just cutting in and out because of the high population,

[9:16] whether that's in locals or just trying to accommodate the large amount of locals and tourists in an area. And then if we look at it from an environmental perspective, we'll see trail erosion and people trying to carve their own path when going through these nature sites. Again,

[9:32] that's because of the lack of coverage in helping enforce this and the large numbers then that are trying to fit into this small trail. And so this is going back to the point of how infrastructure, culture, and environment often can't scale overnight. You can't suddenly claim this one place in Egypt as the hotel to stay in,

[9:57] and then the hotel can't the next day have an expansion ready to take the influx of 500 people coming in from one video. These sudden spikes in visitors put the strain on the public services, local economies that are not structured for this rapid tourism growth. This also can then take on a bigger scale,

[10:18] a broader effect in terms of pollution, as I mentioned, price hikes, maybe even overcrowding in public spaces, and then even policy changes. I've mentioned this in some of my episodes, but the real impact of tourists going into some sites and the lack of policy and enforcement when it comes to certain rules, so some,

[10:44] you're supposed to be covered in mosques when entering, and I have seen people in these very high traffic tour sites not fully covered, in really short shorts, maybe not covering their hair, maybe showing shoulders, and that's for anyone, but then the locals or the destinations not enforcing them to follow the

[11:06] policies and rules for visiting that site. And it's unfortunate, we won't go into whose ownership or her fault or pointing fingers at all, but it's just an observation. And we have to think also in terms of the local, did they really consent to the virality of the post, or now the sudden boom in tourism?

[11:32] Especially if it's rapid overnight, they may have been going about a certain pathway all their lives. And this day to day, like they go to this store to get this, they go to this market to get the fruit, they then go to work, etc. And then now suddenly with tourists, maybe there is

[11:48] no fruit to purchase at the market. Maybe they can't go the same pathway to work because there's bumper-to-bumper traffic. Stuff like this that starts to change up their day-to-day and then maybe start to increase the likelihood of displacement or the locals leaving from an area. So then you may be asking now, after all of this, so Kiara,

[12:09] if hidden gems are hurting travel and places and pushing locals out of their hometowns, what is the alternative?

[12:29] And these are all valid questions. I don't know if I have the answer to that, but instead of saying terms that suggest some kind of secrecy or VIP experience and not known, but now known, we can describe different places, experience, locations, etc., with terms like undervisited with local stewardship, community recommended is one of my favorites,

[12:56] or culturally significant and less crowded. I know I like to say the term off the beaten tourist path, I feel like this is not yet at the same caliber as hidden gems, but it's starting to lean more towards into potentially being harmful to the tourism industry, in that it's also feeling overcrowding and driving more people to

[13:20] a location. So if you were to ask me, and how I define places that I would recommend that are not super crowded yet, I would say community recommended. Now, I choose this one over some of the others because it's still giving credit to the locals and ownership of the place to the locals.

[13:40] So they recognize this is their, we recognize that's their spot.

[13:55] People then know that that is a well-known place, especially amongst locals. So it removes some of the secrecy and hiddenness that maybe hidden gems creates. But it still produces some intrigue or that craving to know what the community is recommending to people from outside themselves

[14:14] to visit and learn. This also goes into talking about places just responsibly in general. Travelers must make better choices when they are provided context, history, the norms, and local expectations, rather than clickbait terms. So when we're giving someone the educational context, material that they need when visiting a place, they have more respect for it.

[14:41] They know where they're going and are better informed to give some understanding to the history, language, culture, community, people, and are less inclined to do destructive behavior. And this ultimately leads to a more meaningful, immersive experience. Real discovery is about learning, not just seeing a place before others do.

[15:04] It's not a race to the finish line, not a race to getting the most viral video on social media. If you do, good for you. But slow tourism is going to emphasize that local culture, depth, and experience that travelers should be focusing on rather than just the checklist rush that we're still seeing the tourism industry focus on.

[15:29] I have a podcast coming out soon where I spoke on another show about this, but there are even locations in a destination that the locals aren't even familiar about. And one of my own examples of a community recommended experience was, was back when I was living in Malang, I had the opportunity to go around with my host

[15:53] family and together just be tourists in their own location, which is really interesting, because we started off by wanting to go to these one or two temples that they were familiar with in the city center. But then the more we started going to and talking with the locals who work there in the villages,

[16:12] there was four other temples that they had never heard of in their vicinity. Now, they had lived there their whole lives, and this was their first time hearing about them. So talk about community recommended. We were going off of verbal instructions, trying to figure out how to get there and drive around.

[16:28] When we got there, there was no one else there. The locals in the area knew about it, but it truly was a place where you would only know if you interacted with the community members, which I think is a great example of this.

[16:43] And I did go on a podcast that will release soon where I talk about this more, I'm calling it the Malang Temple Circuit. But it's just all about the power of branding something as community recommended versus saying like a hidden gem, because it's still, all the locals know those temples,

[17:04] they have the history about it and they want people to know, but they also don't want the mass tours coming in. The goal of travel shouldn't be to find something before everyone else. It should be to understand it better than most. Continuing with this idea of understanding and the power of language,

[17:23] not just in general, I want to focus on the power in the tourism sector. Social media directly shapes travel behavior, especially now in the AI era. We're going off of recommendations from third parties and influencers. Destinations that show up more online in social media or in our LLMs get more visitors.

[17:48] Positive comments also increase the appeal and travel intent for people to go visit that. So when you start calling them terms like hidden gems or off the beaten path destinations, I'm going to call myself out on that one, then you're starting to get more clickbait and more people going to these

[18:07] destinations because they want to know what the secrecy is. Why was this place hidden for so long? Why is it not visited? This is, again, that's the branding of it. But I want to go into now also another example is how positive you speak of a place, right? So

[18:23] on social media, people are giving these recommendations, then we have the comment section, which then can reinforce whether or not they agree with the person who's giving the recommendation or not. And the more comments that place gets, the more intrigue that it creates, whether or not it's positive or negative, people just want

[18:39] to know what the people are talking about in the comment section. And I spoke to this a lot in a lot of my episodes, this travel FOMO starts to grow, and people want to know what they're missing out on, so then they're sending themselves to that destination

[18:53] to discover it on their own. Travel research suggests giving people more context to a destination, experience, country, not just the imagery, it leads to more intentional decisions, means choosing experiences over those Insta-worthy or Insta-famous shots that many of us search for just for the social media hype.

[19:16] When we change the language that we're associating with these recommendations, or how we position something on social media or in the marketplace, expectations are being influenced, and expectations influence behavior. They're all interconnected. So I want to challenge our listeners, what if success wasn't about secrecy or uniqueness? What would that mean in the travel industry? Slow tourism

[19:41] is starting to fall more into the sector, because you're taking more time in a place to really understand and get the full context of it and move through spaces more intentionally. It's qualitative, motivated by deeper engagement with culture and heritage versus getting the travel checklist completed and adding another one to your country counter.

[20:02] This helps with changing the way our memories form. They exist more in our long-term memory and they're linked to stronger emotional recall, satisfaction, and even that sense of growth that we get from being in a place for a long time and starting to see how our

[20:19] perceptions, ideas, approach change. I always like to say a successful slow travel trip is one where you come back a little bit changed for the better and seeing yourself grow into a different person. But going back to my other question, what if success wasn't about secrecy or uniqueness,

[20:40] how would we measure the success or the popularity of a destination? How would we give recommendations? Maybe it's that we're moving through them too quickly to really see them and to notice them. If we want travel to remain meaningful, we have to change not just where we go, but how we talk about it, how we brand it,

[21:02] how we present it, and how we think about why we're traveling in the first place. I want you to reflect on some of those earlier questions I just asked you before, but I also want you to think about what language you're using when you're talking about travel and how you express your Instagram, your TikToks, your videos,

[21:23] and who does it serve? You or the places you visit? Be sure to check out Kultura Travel's website and see more of the cultural experiences and destinations that we're adding into our itineraries. And as always, check out other episodes of Put the Guidebook Down, like, comment, subscribe. And for those listening,

[21:43] if you would like to drop us a note in the comment section or on our Substack, please, I would love to hear how maybe we can change how we express our posts. Remember to take the time to put the guidebook down and truly look around next time you travel.

[21:59] But also, after your trip or during, maybe take a pause before you hit that post button. Do you really need to use the words hidden gem? Or can we begin to swap it out for community recommended? Thank you so much, everyone. Bye!