Not all influencer-led tours are created equal.
As an avid independent traveler, I’m pretty choosy when it comes to booking any tour. Usually, I avoid them entirely. Sure, I’ve been known to tag along on a food tour, diving into overwhelming culinary waters like the street markets of Delhi with a seasoned street food pro, or opting for a full day snorkel session to otherwise unreachable islands, but booking a multi-day tour with a group of strangers, sticking to someone else’s itinerary, always seemed a bit of a nightmare to me. Yet every influencer appears to be cashing in on the group travel trend.
But influencer does not equal expert. How do you tell if your favorite social media personality is offering a worthwhile tour you couldn’t plan yourself, laced with intelligent insight that also cultivates community?
One Tour Changed the Way I Look at Group Travel
Scrolling aimlessly from my hostel bed in Northern India, I stumbled upon my own personal favorite creator’s (@LostWithPurpose) call for bookings, following a last-minute cancellation on her Pakistan motorcycle tour. Pakistan had long been on my travel shortlist, and considering it was right next door and I was itching to get out of India following a rough bout of food poisoning…I took it as fate and booked the tour. Spoiler: It went shockingly well. The merits of group travel are many. For one, it turns out, people who love the same influencer generally have quite a bit in common, so the group dynamic was excellent. More like traveling with long-time friends than the absolute strangers that they were.
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I spent two weeks zooming around the high mountains of Pakistan learning the cultural nuances of this complex and at times challenging destination alongside Alex Reynolds, her Pakistani business partner (Sana Marwat), and a small group of like-minded “influenced” travelers. Since then, I’ve been back to Pakistan three times, and it’s easily one of my favorite countries to visit—all thanks to this incredibly well-designed influencer-led tour.
Unfortunately, not all creator trips are crafted with the same care, expertise, and attention to detail as Alex’s. Too often, they are simply money-grabs led by full-time travelers desperate to earn money while living life on the road. I get it, we all want to travel forever.
But poorly run, these types of tours can exacerbate overtourism, provide zero cultural context or expertise to the guest, and worst of all, rip money from the hands of local guides and the communities they visit. In this case, you’re essentially paying (a lot) for a chance to meet a social media celebrity in an exotic locale, and getting not much more out of the deal.
There are three tell-tale signs to watch for when determining if a creator-led tour is worth the money to you or simply a waste of your time.
The Creator Has Actually Visited the Destination Independently Before Running Tours
This seems like a no-brainer, but you would be shocked at how many creators run tours to countries they have never set foot in before.
Perhaps these influencers are so confident in their unshakeable travel skills that they feel they need no assistance navigating the cultural waters of an unfamiliar destination. Or perhaps, they feel they are in fact the entire reason you’ve signed on in the first place. As any expert traveler knows, the real magic happens when you visit a destination alongside someone who knows it intimately and can spill secrets you won’t find anywhere else.
Alex from Lost With Purpose, leader of my first influencer-led tour, lives in Pakistan. She traveled, as a solo woman on a motorcycle, to every corner of the country, speaks some Urdu, and now also runs two hostels in the country. You would be hard-pressed to find a human without a Pakistani passport who knows the country better than she does. Traveling in Pakistan with her unlocked a plethora of knowledge and funny anecdotes that only someone who has spent a seriously long time in a country could possibly know.
When you book a guided tour, you are anticipating that the host has a certain level of expertise or insider knowledge; otherwise, you would go by yourself.
They Employ Local Guides and Support Marginalized Communities
It doesn’t matter how well-versed your favorite influencer is in a country; your visit should always benefit the local communities directly. This means hiring a local guide. This is just good travel ethics.
This also often means more than one local guide. Sometimes a single influencer-led trip transcends several cultures or regions, requiring different languages, dialects, and areas of expertise. On our trip, Sana was an encyclopedia of knowledge, covering all my in-depth Pakistan questions, but he also offered translation services for our endless questions to other guides they had set up at various forts, museums, and remote corners of the country.
Travel can be a force for good. It can empower disenfranchised groups and marginalized communities around the world. All while you get an epic and more unique trip out of it. Alternatively, it can also hollow out those communities, gentrify neighborhoods, and reduce investment in local traditions by prioritizing foreign investors.
Choosing a tour that supports women in an otherwise patriarchal society or is led by an indigenous community member opens a window into a less-explored perspective and leaves behind a positive impact. As we thumbed through stacks of traditional designs to choose the perfect hand-woven rug from a Women’s Collective in Gilgit, where women have the opportunity to work for themselves, I chatted with Alex about her other tours in the country. Tours led entirely by women for women. Female guides in Pakistan are few and far between, but the insight they provide about their home country is invaluable.
While most creator tours employ some form of local guide, reputable operators like Alex or Andi from @Destination Chaser on her Madagascar, Socotra, or Tanzania tours develop lasting working relationships with a small circle of guides to help craft the perfect itinerary and set the right vibe for the group. Group dynamics matter; in fact, they are one of the most crucial parts of planning a tour.
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The Tour Itinerary Covers More Than Just the Greatest Hits
I can Google the top 10 places to see in any given country. Those places are bound to have the easiest-to-navigate tourist infrastructure, too. So if your favorite influencer is running tours that only visit the must-see sights in a country, it is a sign that the tour as a whole is unlikely to dip beneath surface level.
While I’m not saying you have to skip the must-sees entirely, you want your creator-led tour to give you something you can’t just do yourself.
On our visit to Pakistan, we skipped Fairy Meadows. Instead, Alex took us to her favorite view of Nanga Parbat (the iconic mountain peak), and not only did we miss the crowds, but we got a way closer and more dramatic view of the mountain. Picture standing alone at sunrise, staring straight into the glaciated face of one of the 14 highest peaks on earth.
This is not a destination I would have found on my own, even after weeks of scouring the internet. From the guesthouses she chose, to the regional-specific meals home-cooked for us, to the motorcycle route itself, all took us far off the beaten path and toward a better understanding of Pakistan.
Considering the current landscape of overtourism, we should be diversifying the destinations we visit to ensure they are still around for the long term. And let’s be honest, crowds suck.
Bonus Tip: Creators Ask You to “Apply” For the Trip
I found that most reputable creator tours required you apply for the trip rather than simply pay your way into the group. It shows they genuinely care whether you are a good fit for the group trip and will enjoy it, rather than just boosting their tour numbers to maximize profits.
Alex ensures that all her Pakistan motorcycle tour guests are familiar with motorcycles or seem adventurous enough to rise to the challenge. A quick meet and greet with the influencer can ensure that you are prepared for whatever challenges the itinerary in question will throw at you. How extensive exactly is the hiking? Do you understand the kinds of clothing (conservative or not) you should be packing? Are you a good fit for the rest of the group? This is a great way to weed out miscommunication before you’ve bought your flight.
Know the Warning Signs That an Influencer Trip Is Bound to Disappoint
If it’s a new-to-them destination that doesn’t openly project support of local communities and only visits the sights you already knew existed–it’s probably not going to be an exceptional or memorable tour experience.
Companies like Trova Trip are mainstreaming this kind of creator-led shallow travel and cheapening the group tour experience. Rather than leveraging years of personal experience traveling in a country, carefully crafting the perfect itinerary, and selecting personable guides to maintain the vibe, influencers in this model work solely as advertisers. They have little to no say in how the trip is run, the guides who lead you, or even the itinerary of the tour—they just sell it to their followers so they can land a payday.
At its best, an influencer-led tour can bring together a large group of like-minded, soon-to-be IRL friends to experience and learn about a new destination from a tried-and-true expert. A creator who has done this before, who is passionate about this destination, and who has the insider knowledge to give back to the people who should benefit from your visit.
I certainly would not have developed the love I have for Pakistan without first having visited the country with Alex from Lost With Purpose. We all have our favorite social media personalities, and the appeal of traveling with them is plain to see. But to truly reap the benefits of group travel, you’ll want to ensure that your favorite Instagram or TikTok traveler offers something more than bland, cookie-cutter itineraries.
