Tik Tok Travel Ban Could Change Travel

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 million followers on the app, who flock to her for advice on the best buffets, clean hotel rooms and local entertainment, but she’s worried that the ban will harm local businesses that can’t afford international marketing campaigns.

“TikTok is unique in that it is not pay for play — you don’t have to promote a video to get it seen,” Ms. Gay said. “You post it, and if the food looks great, if the content looks great, if they’re doing something really special, it has a very good probability of reaching millions of people.”

Once Ms. Gay posts about a business on her account, it’s not unusual for them to sell out of food or get lines that sprawl down the block. That immediate surge in business has helped underground shows like “The Magician’s Study,” restaurants like With Love, Always and The Pepper Club and the Mexican snack shop Un Poko Krazy, among many others. In that way, she sees TikTok as a vital way to shake up the local tourism industry.

Though she’ll continue posting her videos on nearly a dozen other platforms, Ms. Gay is sure that many tourism-oriented small businesses will go out of business without TikTok.

“I’m in the community that Keith Lee is from,” Ms. Gay said — referring to the remarkably influential food critic with 16.8 million TikTok followers who samples takeout meals in his car — “and he single-handedly has saved hundreds of businesses. I put my numbers in the dozens.”

Even travel influencers outside the U.S. are worried about how the ban will affect their work.

Jorden Tually, 31, is an Australian travel creator who jets across the world in a signature orange baseball cap and takes requests from his 3.7 million followers on TikTok. He said that a quarter of his following is based in the U.S., and many of his sponsorship deals are too. Without their access to TikTok, he’s worried that people in the United States won’t be able to find travel content in the same ways.

Mr. Tually said one of the things that sets the app apart is its searchability. “If you’re searching on YouTube, you’re looking for something specific,” he said. “If you’re searching on Instagram, well, it’s just not going to work. But if you’re searching on TikTok, you can put in, like, ‘epic travel destinations,’ and then search by what’s been going viral in the last week.”

One possible silver lining: “Maybe you’re not going to get the cult-tourist attack on specific locations that go TikTok viral,” he said. “Like maybe some little cafe has a three-foot-long hot dog.”

Vivoli’s affogato caught Becky Blaine’s eye. “I kept seeing that viral affogato in Florence where they’re, like, spreading the ice cream on all four sides of the cup,” said Ms. Blaine, 47, a senior travel editor for The Points Guy, a website devoted to rewards travel.

The only problem?

“Look at these lines,” she said. “I don’t want to stand in those lines the next time I go to Italy.”

In that sense, travel TikTok’s content creates a classic social media paradox: People try to post about less-crowded destinations, but when their videos go viral, the destinations become the kinds of crowded places that they were trying to avoid.

Folderol, a Paris ice cream shop and natural wine bar, struggled when it was flooded with TikTokers in early 2023. Its owners, Jessica Yang and Robert Compagnon, ultimately had to post signs at the door that barred customers from using TikTok.

“They don’t even taste the ice cream,” Ms. Yang told The Times in 2023. “They just let it pool into a bowl of melting liquid and die in the sun.”

And though the TikTok ban may cause a temporary shift in the travel sphere, there’s no doubt that short-form travel content will find a new home soon enough.

“At the end of the day, the show must go on,” said Mr. Tually, who also posts his content on YouTube and Instagram. “The only thing that’s potentially good about TikTok dying is another platform being created.”

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