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Photo geotag lookup6/22/2023 There’s an opportunity to use the geotag debate to motivate responsible travel, starting with young people. Geotags or not, the role of photo-sharing apps in proliferating travel isn’t going away, so perhaps the best way forward is to embrace them as a tool, many say. And a 2018 Expedia study found that 84 percent of Gen-Z participants and 77 percent of millennials said they were influenced by friends’ or influencers’ travel pictures on social media. According to a 2018 report by the Outdoor Industry Association, 49 percent of the US population participated in an outdoor activity in 2017-1.7 million more people than in 2016. The hope is that no matter who shows up and shares the park on social media, the destination will be set up for responsible tourism, and newcomers can become versed in these ideas.Īs more travelers hit the road (and the trails), the question of how to conserve fragile destinations is more pressing than ever. ![]() Now the park is equipped to take on more people, teaching them about conservation and sustainability along the way. She cites Roxborough State Park in Colorado as an example of a potentially at-risk place that truly benefited from taking a more educational approach: When land managers and local volunteers noticed an increased flow of visitors, they took Leave No Trace principles-such as staying on marked paths and properly disposing of waste-and infused them into every aspect of the park, from the signage to brochures and maps to the visitors center. Watts agrees that education can be an effective answer, referencing an assortment of useful materials and trainings offered by Leave No Trace. “The goal should be to influence the next generation of conservationists and to encourage people to develop a love of the outdoors.” The effect was so intense that the mayor published his own Instagram video urging visitors to return some other time. Stay on trails and hard surfaces, take only photos, read signs.” Another admitted she’d photoshopped her images, and let followers know they wouldn’t be able to recreate her image. Some influencers tried to mitigate the damage: One user with more than 730,000 followers wrote in a caption: “The bloom was unlike anything I’ve seen, and I hope you get to experience it someday! As always, remember to respect the places we play. It took just a few posts to draw hordes of tourists in a matter of days the crowds that followed trampled the delicate flowers, and caused traffic jams so bad locals in the small town couldn’t access their homes. One dramatic example of the influencer geotagging effect gone wrong was seen in March in Lake Elsinore, California, where a few Instagrammers with massive followings posed among the town’s poppy super bloom. “I try to use my influence and my position to really tell the full story.” “I try not to portray places in this mystical, Oh, this is such a beautiful place, you should come, kind of thing,” says Carlson. “I'm honest about if there are crowds, if there aren’t.” She says she geotags destinations she believes have a capacity for growth and theoretically could handle an influx of visitors-like central Otago, a region of New Zealand she just ran a paid campaign with-and she leans on the destinations to provide that gut check. ![]() “I try to paint an accurate portrait of wherever I am,” says Carlson. Social media influencers, who have legions of followers, are aware of this tricky balance as well.Įlizabeth Carlson, a New Zealand–based blogger at Young Adventuress with more than 200,000 followers on Instagram, has considered the impact of geotagging. So providing someone with information like, Hey, look at this beautiful lake I'm at, and by the way, here's the name of the lake so you can visit, too-it's actually creating a more welcoming and inclusive outdoors.” “I was lucky enough to have that access and knowledge readily available to me. “I grew up canoeing with my dad,” Wise says. But after reading Williams' piece, her views evolved. ![]() Abigail Wise, the digital managing director at Outside magazine, admits that she used to subscribe to the old cliché that we’re loving our public lands to death, intentionally omitting geotags from her pictures. Such reasoning has convinced others to rethink their approach to not geotagging. “And what you see today is inappropriate use, or overuse, because newcomers are inherently undeserving, and we don’t want them here.” “The argument I see over and over on social media and in op-eds, paraphrased, is, ‘Whatever land use looked like when I was growing up-well, that was appropriate use,’” says Williams.
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