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Paper short abstract

Building on ethnographic material from Mafia Island (Tanzania) and Bali (Indonesia) we look at travel influencers as contemporary iterations of brands. Focussing on the affective impact of images we address the packaging of the enchantment of nature for the promotion of the travelling self.

Paper long abstract

Recent changes in social media trends and intensified corporate investment have shifted the platform of branding and their communications to be represented by individuals. This paper looks at travel influencers as prolongations and contemporary iterations of brands. Travel influencers utilise nature, and ‘the wild’, as concepts and images to fortify their own personal brands and to attract external investors. Unlike the incommunicability of the enchantment (Gell) and sublimity (Kant) of nature, travel influencers package their experiences exactly to be told, retold, and ultimately sold and reproduced. Building on recent ethnographic material from Mafia Island (Tanzania) and Bali (Indonesia), this paper incorporates previous work conducted by the authors respectively on charter tourism in Scandinavia and Pakistan, and domestic tourism in India. This paper answers how travel influencers stray from, or bolster, hegemonic narratives of people and nature (and people in nature), and how these narratives contribute to neoliberal makings of the self that capitalise also upon the history of mass tourism. This paper offers a methodological perspective that is attentive to not only verbalised narratives, but also to the affective impact of images.