Why your hotel or destination needs to be on TikTok

With the events of the last year and a half it is highly probable that you have seen plenty of TikTok videos popping up all over the place. If you haven’t, then you are obviously not a big user of social media sites. TikTok is big news and if your hotel or destination isn’t using it yet then you really should be, because you could be missing out on significant exposure. 

What is TikTok?

Even if you have heard of TikTok you may still be wondering exactly what it can do for you. Before we explain this, it is important to understand exactly what TikTok is. Founded in 2016, TikTok is a Chinese video sharing site – and the fastest growing social media platform on a global scale. The site allows users to post short videos of upto 3 minutes in length and it is available in 40 different languages, making it globally popular. 

To say the reach of TikTok is significant is an understatement. Registered user numbers suggest there are almost 1 billion monthly active users. Whilst many of these user fall into the younger age categories – TikTok is available to anyone over the age of 13, although many recommendations here is the UK are that is more suitable for users over the age of 16 – or under 30, there are between 26-31% of users who are aged 30 and over. To put it into figures, that’s around 150-250 million users who you could potentially reach by using the platform.  

Compared to other sites such as Instagram, which is very popular with the tourism sector, and is likely to remain so, and Facebook, TikTok is currently the best platform out there for organic growth. Don’t believe us? Check out the hashtag #uktravel, as this has had over 126 million views and #travel with over 42.3 billion views.

How successful can TikTok be?

TikTok can be incredibly successful. It has even played a part in the birth of a UK number 1 hit single and catapulted a postman into a record deal with one of the biggest players in the music industry. In January 2021, Nathan Evans posted a short video of the Sea Shanty, Wellerman, on the site, which gained him 760,000 followers. Its success saw many other people, including celebrities, posting videos of themselves singing the shanty. It was so popular it coined its own hashtag #shantytok. By March, Evans had spent 7 weeks in the top three of the UK charts before finally reaching the number 1 position. 

This is an example of just one individual and how they achieved an incredible reach with just a few followers. Imagine what TikTok could do for your business with the right backing, and campaigns.

Carden Park is a great industry example of TikTok usage. Over the course of three months, they gained 53.9k followers, with just one of their videos receiving a staggering 1.4million views. The majority of the videos that they posted would have been seen by a majority UK audience. 

And they are not alone. New destinations and properties are joining them on the TikTok platform in an effort to boost their reach, including big brand names such as Visit London, Champneys Spas and Laneley Hall Hotel in Wales. Whilst there are hotels and destinations joining TikTok all the time there are many who have yet to even consider a move, which means that for many this is a platform where their competition simply isn’t present yet. This ‘perfect storm’ could provide a big, as yet untapped, advertising option. 

In the last 3 months alone The Branding Spa have been successful in generating over 6 million views from an audience that is 100% UK based self-catering properties and hotels all of whom are located in the UK. This has been achieved through the use of clever micro influencer campaigns, all of which have been on TikTok. 

Examples below:

Gearing up to the summer

With staycations set to be particularly popular this year (fingers crossed that we get some truly spectacular weather), there are likely to be a great many TikTok users posting on the platform with videos of their holiday essential destinations. We already know from other social media platforms just how valuable a tag or hashtag can be in generating traffic to websites, so it is worth making the move now before the summer gets away from us. Posting some carefully thought out and structured content on TikTok now could really get people interested and generate that all important buzz about your brand. And, of course, as others add their TikTok’s using your # then this will only help to increase your presence.