Lots to unpack here

Secret getaway? It's crowded by 10am. Hidden gem? Not so shiny IRL. Golden sands, azure sea? More edited than naturally exotic. As Insta shapes how we vacation, travel experts open up on what gets cropped out of the frame

- Christalle Fernandes

There's no fighting it. All our travel goals now come from Instagram. We've been sold some very specific fantasies in recent years. Now, all we want is to head to Indonesia, book the Real Bali Swing, and have someone take a picture from the back. We've pencilled in Imerovigli, a village in Santorini, Greece, to do the girl-against-the-cliffs photo, floaty dress, heels and all. We want a piece of that floating breakfast, served in a private pool in the Maldives (we've planned a 5-second video too). Oh, we have to go to Iceland for pics of the hot tub at Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon...

Insta fantasies tend to get a slap in the face when real tourists spend real money on real vacations. That swing takes half a day to get to, and it's all over in three minutes. Santorini is expensive, and there's a queue of young people who hiked there, changed into a floaty dress and heels, and have queued up to take the same shot before the light fades. Floating breakfasts taste like a scam. And even in remote Jökulsárlón, there's always a fellow tourist in the frame.

We asked travel content creators and longtime-travel writers about what's usually left out of the frame when picture-perfect shots make it to our feed. And of course, what it takes to have a memorable holiday, with and without a camera.

Framing it up

"People aren't travelling to explore places anymore," says Rashmi Chadha, founder of travel company Wovoyage. "They're travelling to follow trends and the itineraries they saw on social media.” The numbers back it up.

Booking.​com's 2024 survey of travel trends shows that 66% of Indians who took trips over the past year used social media as inspiration.