This week we posted a mini rant in our Instagram stories about something very close to our hearts. It got so many replies and DMs that we thought we should post about it here too. Long story short, we're planning a trip to Iceland in about 2 weeks, and like we always do, we emailed a few hostels and companies to see if any were interested in collaborating. The photo below is the polite but incredibly sad email that we got back from one hotel about how badly behaved and disrespectful "influencers" (hate that word!!) have put many Icelandic companies off from working with bloggers.
It makes us despair that some people are so obsessed with getting the most outrageous content in order to become "insta famous" that they give all travel bloggers a bad name. We've seen it so often- people climbing on residents' houses, climbing over fences and safety barriers, driving off road, crushing protected plants, flying drones when it clearly says not too... The arrogance is astonishing! During the US Federal shutdown earlier this year, several national parks were damaged by people going wild - driving off road, lighting fires, climbing on endangered plants, not to mention leaving SO MUCH rubbish, just because there was limited staff to keep an eye on things. The photo below was taken in the beautiful village of Bibury in the Cotswolds, where we saw so many examples of precisely this behaviour. People were climbing on garden walls, hanging off porches and doors, and sitting on window sills of people's actual homes. And it's not just here.
How many news stories have we read about Instagrammers literally dying trying to get that shot? Hanging off ledges, falling down waterfalls... Just for that photo? We saw it so often in the States- people climbing over safety barriers to sit on tiny crumbling cliff edges and overhangs just to take a photo. Not worth it!
As we said in our story, people who only care about getting that Instagram shot have lost sight of why we travel and frankly they're embarrassing the rest of the travel blogging community.
Anyway, here endeth the rant. Let us know your thoughts below.
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