How I research the best Instagram spots for upcoming travel
Hello!! I’m super excited to share some of my favorite tips on how I research the best Instagram spots for upcoming travel. I’ve got to say, I tend to take my travels quite seriously, I really enjoy finding beautiful spots and sharing them on my feed.
I’ve made it a mission of mine to not only explore tourist gems that attract so many people to a city, but also spots that are unique and perhaps more of local knowledge. But finding these beautiful local places is often a traveler's best kept secret or complete local knowledge. I find that this makes it more of a challenge to find the spots and definitely more rewarding when you eventually come across them!
I would be remiss in saying that it is easy to find these local spots. It’s not really just a case of “stumbling” upon them, it takes a lot of hard work and time. However, I think it’s important that some of these places are kept this way. It wouldn’t be a local gem if everyone was able to find it.
Unfortunately, this has happened too much of the time around the world. As bloggers start to share their locations and coordinates, these local gems become tourist traps. Out of respect for locals and the preservation of natural beauty around the world, I won’t be sharing any coordinates or directions to hidden places I visit, but take from this blog post what you will!
There are several ways that I will go about looking for incredible Instagram locations while I am traveling. And the first begins on Pinterest.
I am a huge Pinterest fanatic, in fact, you can check out my Pinterest here where I post several times a day both sharing my own content and repinning other fun and exciting pins! Since I have spent time creating boards on my Pinterest account I have a variety of guides to different cities, countries, and/or continents already created. I’ll spend time looking for the most insightful posts on each of the boards and jot down some notes into a notepad from each post.
This may be information on incredible road trips to take in the region, beautiful cafes, one-off attractions, etc. I’ll fit this then into an itinerary I will create before the trip. Pinterest also allows you to search by keyword, so if I’m looking for beautiful cafes in London I’ll likely search “London Cafes” etc. this will give me some more in-depth information about the locations I’ll want to be visiting in general and the vibe of each spot. Pinterest research does not tend to disappoint.
Instagram is my next key stop to continue my research, and here you are likely to find a few more local gems. If you are looking at traveling to a general region, search in the region under the location tab and look at all the geotagged locations for that area. Often the most popular photos will be shown first, but if you continue to scroll you will find imagery from locals in the area that have been visiting beautiful spots that you can too visit to create content at.
Another tip I use is to go more in depth to the location section of instagram. If you have selected a particular region, use the map to search in the towns, sub regions etc of each place. Often some of the best hidden gems will be located under these less commonly used location tags.
Facebook Groups
Going the full extent you may want to join some Facebook pages, for example, a general travel page/group. Some of my favorite include the following:
South Australia Road Trips and Travel
Yes Theory Travel Fam
Women Travel Creators (formerly Female Travel Bloggers)
Travel Meet-Ups - The Solo Female Traveler Network
Women Who Love to Travel
Wandering Women Travel Bloggers
Not only is there ample information regarding travelers’ previous trips to the area but you can also ask more targeted questions to individuals that will likely know the answer. This is obviously best done if the group is large enough to have a variety of experienced minds able to answer your question. If the question is rather obscure, you may want to consider joining some more local facebook groups of different regions around the world. If you contact the admin of the group with your question they may be able to direct you to an individual that has the best answer for you! Often, this individual will also be a local with lots of information about the places you are wanting to find!
In the interest of full disclosure, it is important to understand the idea of discretion while traveling. Many times beautiful locations won’t be geotagged for the purpose of not attracting many tourists and keeping the areas a local secret. If you were to be given the location of a secret spot that locals want to be kept a secret, then keep it a secret! Respecting the locals' wishes as well as protecting our natural environment is always the most important part, we are in their culture and we need to always respect it!
Hey, don’t forget about me! Pin me for later!
