Tech, Travel, and Twang!
Come for the thoughts, stay for the tea. The co-founders of Destination Innovate, Jennifer Barbee and Kristen Cruz brew up the latest industry tea every Tuesday - diving into simmering issues, hot trends, and special guests. Grab a cup and let’s spill the tea!
Tech, Travel, and Twang!
Happy Election Day! Tourism in an Election Year
Is TikTok the new frontier in political influence? Jenn Barbee and Kristen Cruz unravel the unexpected events of Election Day 2024, including the peculiar incident of Puerto Rico being the target of an unjust criticism in the political sphere. Join us as we discuss how the election cycle has transcended the predictable, entering a realm where social media platforms hold unprecedented sway. With TikTok emerging as a pivotal player in engaging younger voters, we reflect on the transformation from the days when X (Twitter) was the trailblazer in political campaigns to today's complex digital battleground.
Amidst the digital noise, we emphasize the importance of focusing on what truly matters, especially for industries like tourism that occasionally find themselves in the spotlight. As millions of messages swirl in the digital ether, the challenge is to provide travelers with content that is both informative and digestible. From observing the power of social media in Obama's era to dissecting its current vibrant role, our conversation explores how platforms like Instagram and TikTok are shaping the discourse and empowering the next generation to make informed decisions. Tune in for a mix of reminiscence and revelation, as we navigate the swift currents of political and social change and where the tourism industry fits in.
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The Tech, Travel, and Twang Podcast is hosted by Co-Founders, Kristen Cruz and Jenn Barbee with Destination Innovate. Learn More! https://destinationinnovate.com/about/
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Well, hi there, welcome back to Tech Travel and Twang. It's Jen Barbie and Christian Cruz on Election Day 2024. That's crazy. You sound so official when you say Election Day 2024.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. You sound so official when you say election day 2024. I was practicing my non-regional diction. Yes, happy election day, jen Barbie. It is an interesting day. It's been an interesting year. It's been a really interesting past few weeks, as we have arrived at, you know, just another dimension in the Twilight Zone we live in.
Speaker 1:And so interesting during all of this, rallies and all of these things, who would have thought a destination would have gotten drug?
Speaker 2:Can we spill that tea first? Let's do it. That's definitely hot off the presses.
Speaker 1:I can't remember the comedian's name because it's not worth remembering, in my opinion. Tony, something or another who said that Puerto Rico was an island of garbage, which, of course, both sides denounced, but, like who would have thought on my bingo card, I did not have Destination getting drugged at a presidential election.
Speaker 2:No, and this is why when I, when I say like another, like dimension of the twilight, we don't know what, what is coming at any point during this election, we cannot prepare enough, okay, but yeah, it's, it's just, um, you know, there's definitely things, I think, within the election that you just, you know there's fodder back and forth, which I think is a big topic for us today. Social media has played a part, so we all have a voice right, including the comedians of the world and whomever else, but it's definitely changed just in the ways that all of this information is being shared, like millions of messages every minute related back to something that someone has said or some opinion that someone has, and just, it has never really touched our industry as much, but it's crazy when it does, it's like, okay, of all the things that we should be talking about right now.
Speaker 2:We're going to talk about this instance with Puerto Rico and we're going to make that comment, and then that's now is what's circulating, and I guess I just come at it from the perspective of we don't have time for this, people, let's focus on what we need to focus on. Can we get down to the things that really matter to us right now, like the right nows? Because, no, we're all too busy for this.
Speaker 1:But yeah, puerto Rico is such a strong tourism brand they are. When I heard that I was like you know that's not going to do anything, but go the other way for them because it's laughable. It is a gorgeous and cultured and nuanced place in our country.
Speaker 1:So that was an interesting little tourism piece of it. But I want to kind of pull the thread on what you said about social media and in these elections, and it's so interesting. One of our team members shared the, an article about how TikTok is really like the battleground this year, which is so funny because if you remember when Obama ran, he was the very first presidential candidate that had a Twitter account. They had any of that, so really a lot of the credit going to that win in that election happened on a social media battleground. That win and that election happened on a social media battleground, so I'm not surprised at all. Of course it's just shifted platforms, because twitter our ex, formerly known as twitter is is a garbage dump, so a lot of people aren't getting their information from there and especially the younger generations are getting it from tiktok.
Speaker 2:yeah, and they're investigating all of the like.
Speaker 1:We didn't get that information, you know, when we had presidential elections coming up. So there's so much more that this younger generation is knowledgeable about and educates themselves about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is very true. I mean, I think originally a lot of the intention was OK we need to get in front of the younger voters. We need to encourage, you know, our younger voters to get out and vote and to give them enough narrative for them to make a healthy, informed decision. And a lot of times that's bite-sized nuggets that you're consuming off of a TikTok platform.
Speaker 1:You know, Instagram is another one.
Speaker 2:I think that yeah.
Speaker 1:It is for sure, and it's so funny because you just triggered something in my memory here because I'm that old. Another one is my very first presidential election. I was it was 1992 and Bill Clinton was running and a lot of us voted for him because he showed up on Saturday Night Live. Why is that so? 90s of you playing a saxophone, no less of course he was. Of course he was and so we're like oh yeah, that's our guy, right, that's our guy yeah, we get like, yeah, that's our guy.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, and and I think the other thing that's funny with the TikTok scenario is it's because TikTok is a platform for so many things. Now I cannot tell you how many rabbit holes TikTok sends us down. Jen, you know this. We get down rabbit holes. Just random stories, random videos that turn into parts and chapters and we're following these people down these rabbit holes and I'm like why am I watching part 16 of this?
Speaker 1:why did I get this far and the tea is. You have like 27 TikToks. I've sent to you that you haven't responded to.
Speaker 2:Jen, I cannot make enough time for TikTok and I don't go on.
Speaker 2:I purposely don't go on there most of the time because it will drag me down to the fifth dimension.
Speaker 2:Okay, I will live on TikTok for the rest of the evening going down these rabbit holes, and I feel like that's what's happening with some of the election content too. It's like take me down this rabbit hole, but then I'm going to go down this rabbit hole and then I'm going to head here and then you get into some of the. You know the conversations that aren't surface level. You know about our candidates and their beliefs and all these various things, and it starts to get you asking questions and then you go search for more things and that's, I think, the saga of the TikTok right and how it contributes to the election is. There's so there's so much content and very dynamic content, opinions and thoughts and rhetoric, and you know theories and all of these things, that you get to a point where you know you start questioning am I voting for the right person, or did I make the right decisions? Or now I need to go investigate this, and so it turns us all into like a detective trying to make informed decisions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it turns us all into, like a detective trying to make informed decisions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really does. And if you look at what happened with New York times and the webmasters and the app developers going on strike the day before election to also make a point, kind of tells you that the election itself is also. It just affects so many other things and that's where you know. Coming back to travel and tourism, you know it's going to be. This is going to be on people's minds for a while and, depending on how they feel about whether they're candidate one or lost, it could affect travel, it could affect economy.
Speaker 2:Well, absolutely. It also affects how guarded people want to be with their discretionary income, you know, because we don't know what we don't know. We don't know if some of the things that we've been told are going to happen would happen, are we? You know, is inflation going to continue to, you know, be an issue and even maybe an even bigger issue, you know how other just there's so many moving parts. At the same time, you have to really be a little more guarded, you know, around election time and during and even after, for sure. So definitely that's going to affect travel.
Speaker 2:I mean, there was so much study that came out when we were diving into this during conference season, when we were talking through different surveys and just various studies that have come out over the year about how the election year has impacted tourism in general, just in thoughts about travel, and what was really great to see was that in the majority of studies that have been done, travelers are still prioritizing travel and not considering it a luxury or something that they would be budgeting for potentially. But it is a line item, it's not a luxury, it is a necessity. Regardless of election year and regardless of who is elected, they still have to prioritize that for themselves, for their mental health, for their family and whatnot. And so it just might be different ways of traveling and it might be different places you might be thinking of visiting, based on budgets and things. But travel, I think, is hopefully more so now than ever.
Speaker 1:You're right, Like we've always said before, that travel is a luxury, but it's absolutely is not, and especially for the younger generations. Don't even consider that a potential luxury, Although we still have a bad culture of supporting our people who need to take that time off and take a break. One of my friends not really a big demanding job either took vacation last week and I saw on her Facebook roll yesterday. I took vacation last week. I came back to 250 emails. So that just thinks about. Like that's the anxiety. If anything holds us back, I don't think it's the economy. I don't think it's. I think it's the anxiety of this crazy culture, corporate culture that we still have going on, that we can't take care of ourselves, that we don't have self-care time.
Speaker 2:The demand is very high, but the hours in our day have not changed. We still get the same amount of time every day. That never changes. But the demand on us to do more with that time continues to grow. As a society, we're expected to do more, we're expected to be more efficient, we're expected to adopt things that are going to be, you know, helpful for us to do more with that time and I think a lot of it too is, you know, we.
Speaker 2:This goes even, you know, a step further. We don't, we can't even be sick, you know. Like, take what's a sick day, I can't, I don't have time to be sick today. I'm going to miss three calls and three deliverables, and I don't have bandwidth to make that up later. And so we start prioritizing work over our mental and physical health, which is, you know, that's even worse than just not prioritizing it for travel. So we yeah, we we've got to do better as a, as a society, but it's just when the demand is there and there's not, the pressure is there and it's hard. Our anxiety isn't at all time high, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So I think for travel brands, a good takeaway to that is be the calm to the storm. You know, like regardless, if that calm means adventure travel for this person, that's fine. If that calm means whatever that piece is, that's what travelers are. Really. It doesn't matter how this election is going to go. We're going to have a few nasty citizen months ahead of us. So, like being the calm to the storm, I think it's just staying the course is really important and book your trip to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely Absolutely. And the other thing I think is important to say here is that when we are thinking about you know, I think there are a lot of cities that are, you know, thinking about the. You know, I don't want to say backlash, but just what extra things they might have to do to manage comments and responses to certain social media activity. Because we're in this very like, we're in an emotional roller coaster, time right Depending on where you live in the political world. But travelers still need to like don't go dark, don't, don't, don't back up and not do what you might normally do in inspiring travel.
Speaker 2:And inspiring because even if travelers can't go right, even if they're there is some trepidation or they're not secure enough yet to really kind of book that, or maybe, again, like the anxiety is flooding and they just don't feel like they have time, they still that there is still some awareness about your destination, some peace that you bring them. When you're sharing inspiration for future planning. I mean we're, we're all always looking ahead, like the anticipation to be able to do something, that is, the calm from the storm is always going to be peaceful, like it's always a necessity for us. We always need something to look forward to in that way. So absolutely, we'll see a big boom.
Speaker 1:We'll see a big boom with holiday travel, regardless, because people are. I think they're going to double down.
Speaker 2:We crave Christmas right now Like we need Christmas. We are. This is a pivotal time where we need the holidays, we need our family time, we need traditions, we need Christmas lights, we need joy, we need food. You know what I'm saying? Like we need to go back to the basics in a lot of ways, just to like reset and reconfigure. So, absolutely, people, we're yeah Holidays. I feel like, and I imagine we're going to have some, we're going to probably break some records when it comes to oh, we are absolutely going to break some records for holidays this year, so that's all encouraging.
Speaker 1:And also, people are looking earlier for summer travel, so that's another like tips. Like, just look forward, regardless of how you feel about this. We just want to pop on election day more to like, be the calm to like, let you know there's nothing really to do but your job that you do every day, which is welcome travelers, welcome visitors, welcome meeting planners and give them a place to have incredible memories.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and we're all in the same boat. I'll bite the big boat and we don't know what city we're sailing, but we're all right there in the same place.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. We will see you guys next week. Hopefully, everything swings the way you want it to swing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye.
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