Without TikTok, Saint Honoré, a doughnut and pizza shop in Las Vegas, or Vivoli Gelateria, a shop in Florence, Italy, known for its fancy affogatos, might not be on the bucket lists of the travelers who now line up down the block for their treats.
“A majority of our customers come from TikTok,” said Alexandra Lourdes, 40, an owner of Saint Honoré. “We rely solely on it for marketing our small businesses here in Las Vegas, and we are very nervous about losing business.”
And Ryan Goff, 40, may never have gone to stay at the five-star Waldorf Astoria in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Cabo “wasn’t on my radar at all,” said Mr. Goff, the social media and marketing director for a Baltimore-based marketing agency called MGH, but a single video on the app convinced him to book his trip.
But with the United States’ ban potentially going into effect as soon as Sunday, about 170 million American users could lose access to TikTok, shutting off a key outlet for an industry of influencers, and denying their followers a path to their discoveries, for better or worse.
Travel is one of the areas that has been profoundly affected by the app. Since TikTok began growing in popularity in 2019, there have been 56.5 million posts under #travel, and it has unleashed a torrent of new trends: couples seeming to jump from the airport to the beach, frequent fliers sharing travel hacks and people filming themselves dancing in the mirrors that they often pass during their trips.
According to TikTok, 59 percent of North American users found travel inspiration on the app, with its algorithm consistently serving users relevant videos about both global travel destinations and under-the-radar gems. While some of these posts will naturally migrate to platforms like YouTube and Instagram Reels, influencers and travel experts are wondering how the ban might shift current trends.
MGH is one of the many places that have conducted surveys on how TikTok has reshaped the travel industry.
“On a platform like Google or TripAdvisor, it is so overwhelming in terms of the amount of content, the amount of recommendations and not knowing what’s real versus what’s paid for,” Mr. Goff said. “It’s really tough to cut through that clutter, versus on a platform like TikTok, where it’s presented to you in a very clean format from people who come across as very trustworthy.”
Jennifer Gay, 44, began making TikToks about Las Vegas in 2021 under the name @vegasstarfish. She currently has 1.7…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at NYT > Travel…