The 21st-century way to research holidays

Picture the scene: you’re trundling your suitcase through the corridor of a posh hotel at the beginning of a romantic mini-break when, all of sudden, a naked man gets pushed into your path from one of the bedrooms. Is he a cheating lover? A nudist burglar? Or just yet another TikToker engaging in one of the platform’s trends, the #hotelprank?

The answer is most likely the latter. A search for ‘hotels prank’ on the platform reveals that another 43.6 million have also looked it up. The practical jokes range from the mildly irritating (knocking on strangers’ hotel rooms and running away) to the downright terrifying (faking a dead body with pillows and sheets and tying a phone cord around its neck for housekeeping staff to find once the creator has checked out). Though this particular caper resulted in a plea from hotel workers to avoid replica videos that might cause distress to employees, it has generated a flurry of copycat pranks.

Still, one person’s bad taste is another’s must-scroll. TikTok is fast becoming Gen Z’s social media platform of choice. With more than 1 billion monthly users, it’s hot on the heels of Instagram (which has 1.4 billion) while its engaging content makes it addictive: people stay on TikTok for an hour and a half per day according to research by digital analyst Sensor Tower. They’re not all just looking at videos of dance moves or practical jokes either. For many users, TikTok has become a search engine in its own right. 

From social platform to search engine

During a talk this year, Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice President at Google, told the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference: “In our studies, something like almost 40 per cent of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or search, they go to TikTok or Instagram.” The same goes for hotels, with #travel attracting more than 90 billion TikTok views and content labelled “boujee on a budget” reflecting a generational need for price-conscious stays that look great on social media (“boujee” being an abbreviation of the French “bourgeois”).

“I definitely go straight to TikTok to search for places,” says regular user and 23-year-old tech PR professional Aneesa Mahmood. “The way that TikTok differs is that it’s fast and highly personalised and there are more people who aren’t sponsored or paid.” With up to ten minutes of video but usually much less, a TikTok post can also be more informative than a traditional Instagram one but less dense than sifting through Google reviews. 

Because of the platform’s algorithm, users are fed highly personalised content (which explains why Mahmood had never seen, or even been aware of, the #hotelpranks movement but regularly consumes videos about restaurants and cafés around the world). However, before it adjusts to your preferences, looking at TikTok can feel like wading through a lot of nonsense you’ve never even thought about, let alone wanted to see. “It takes getting used to,” says Mahmood.

Tiktoking travel brands

With a whole generation of under 35s hooked and user numbers growing, it’s no wonder that hotels and other travel brands are falling over themselves to attract TikTokers, whether they annoy the staff or not. For some, such as the Best Western franchise, the platform has brought cachet where other marketing ploys have failed: ‘best western themed room’ has 22 million views on TikTok with the successful account @aprettycoolhoteltour tracing a path through several of the chain’s hotels across the USA to reveal log cabin- and spaceship-themed extravaganzas.

Meanwhile Marriott Bonvoy launched a much-publicised #30days300stays contest last spring to find three official TikTok correspondents who could embark on round-the-world trips for the brand (the hashtag got 135.4 million views and the chosen trio are still busy documenting their stays in Ibiza, Melbourne, Barcelona and beyond). 

Other travel brands are also building recognition on the platform. Mahmood namechecks Ryanair’s account, which has 1.9 million followers, 23.3 million likes and a long run of amusing videos. Meanwhile, Booking.com celebrated joining TikTok this summer with a seven trip giveaway in which users had to like a video trailing the promotion, follow the company’s account – and be ready to leave in 48 hours. 

How to plan a holiday on TikTok

When putting together a recent trip to Copenhagen, Mahmood plotted all the places she’d sourced from the platform onto a Google Map and then used her findings to book accommodation at the centre of the action. But wherever your destination, there will be plenty of TikTok users who’ve rated the restaurants they’ve visited and the sites they’ve seen – and plenty of people who follow in their footsteps after seeing their videos. 

Data from the mobile booking app Hopper shows that, when destinations become the top-trending cities on TikTok, there’s a corresponding spike in bookings among its key audience (20- and 30-somethings). In November 2022 for example, when #amsterdam got 6.9 billion views, flight and hotel searches related to the city increased by 85 per cent among its users.  

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in a particular hotel, a TikTok user has probably been there and made the video – and, unlike on Instagram where destinations are often airbrushed to perfection, you might see a warts-and-all portrayal of your accommodation of choice (however, if there are hundreds of videos of one place to stay, you’ve probably sniffed out a secret marketing ploy). Accounts often highlight dirty rooms and hotel pitfalls or take viewers on mini-tours that reveal a more honest view than the official brochures or websites.

You can also search for deals on the site. Travel planners such as @sabrinaescapes and @uktraveldeals trail bargain packages to far-flung destinations, while a host of other accounts are full of nifty, 21st-century tips on finding the best deals yourself (such as always using incognito mode to search for flights or Skyscanner’s “everywhere” button to get the best deals on city breaks). With all this in mind, it might be worth a minute or two of time – as long as the algorithm’s on your side.

Would you research a trip on TikTok? Please let us know in the comments below