Last week, I saw an Instagram reel, a short video about a new café in Bandra,. The reel was posted by a reasonably popular food influencer account. The fifteen-seconds reel had visuals of the café’s signature cold brew coffee in cylindrical glass bottles, baristas pouring expressos, the café’s charming décor and some food items. It looked like a cute, small and quaint place. It was less than a kilometer away from my house. My wife and I walked over for a cup of coffee, only to find a thirty-minute wait list. The crowds waiting to get into the café spilled over to the streets. I did see the cold brew glass bottles like I did in the reel. However, I also saw people packed into the café, hapless waiters scurrying around trying to meet orders and a kitchen staff that collapsed under the workload to the point that all new food orders were stopped.
In the queue, I asked six patrons waiting to get in what made them come here. Everyone had seen the same exact reel as I did. The little video had done a fabulous job of making people want to go to the café. However, the poor little café was not prepared for this onslaught. Far from being a quiet, quaint place to have coffee, it resembled a crowded Mumbai local train ticket booking counter.
Welcome to the world of Instagram influencer marketing, where tiny places with limited capacity to handle people can literally be shown to lakhs of people at the same time. Even if a mere one percent of people decide to visit, that could be thousands of people trying to get into an six hundred square feet café.
This onslaught is not just limited to cafes. It’s particularly damaging to tourist spots, especially many of our hill stations and even pilgrimage spots. Recently, a rather cute and romantic proposal video, where a man goes on his knees to propose to his significant other went viral. The video was shot outside the Kedarnath shrine, and the backdrop did make for a beautiful visual. The couple wore co-ordinated traditional outfits, which went well with the setting too. The video was nicely done, and as such there is nothing wrong with it. The problem is now millions of people have seen it. What if it becomes a trend to propose to your girlfriend with god’s abode in the mountains as backdrop? It sounds wonderful on paper. However, the many of our hill towns, including pilgrimage places simply cannot handle this. Imagine tens of thousands of couples landing up with the guys carrying a ring in their pocket and a selfie stick in the other. The place will literally collapse. Not to mention the place meant to be a holy shrine with a divine and serene environment will turn into a content creation set for gen-Z trying to get the ‘spiritual vibez’ and meet their ‘mountain spirit calling’ or whatever trending hashtag.
One realizes the need for free creative expression. I also realize it is good to publicize our tourist spots and pilgrimage places. However, it is all becoming too much. Our hill stations are choked, beach paradise Goa now has massive traffic jams and pilgrimage spots are becoming Instagram vantage points. Quaint cafes and restaurants who have some Instagram worthiness have become prey for content vultures. It almost feels like everyone is either working to make content for Instagram or flex their life on the social media app.
We must do something about this. The most urgent places that need attention are our pilgrimage spots, ecologically fragile hill towns and tourist spots with limited infrastructure. Marketing is good, but overmarketing without the corresponding infrastructure increase can actually destroy a place and the experience of going there. With all respect to the feelings of the couples who want to propose outside famous temples, let us please limit the use of cell phone videography and videos near the vicinity of holy places. We should also have quotas and permits of number of visitors and vehicles allowed at any one point in our hill stations and beach locations with limited road capacity. For people watching insta influencers and rushing to that café or restaurant with the cool bottle or cute cushions (guilty as charged, I have done this), stop! Or at least go after a while of that reel being posted. Even better, walk around an area and discover places yourself. There something wonderful about stumbling at a nice café, rather than have your entire life dictated by Instagram influencers and Google reviews.
Influencers today hold massive clout in the sale of almost any product and service. Within limit, this can be a wonderful thing for small businesses and local economies of travel spots. However, we are at a point where these limits are being routinely crossed. If we don’t do something about the impact it has on our fragile pilgrimage spots and tourist towns, we might end up at the least destroying the experience of visiting these places, or worst case, destroy the place itself. Content is a good thing, but let it not run over and ruin real life.