Image: Lauren Bullen Dabble for long in the world of travel Instagram, though, and you'll find everyone is taking the same photo at the world's most photogenic swimming pool. The lucky hotel is Riad Jasmine in Marrakech, Morocco. The pair took over in 2015, they told Mashable over email, renovating and setting in motion a whole new blogger-focused social media strategy. "She was the first to promote the Riad via her Instagram. At this time, she had 10K followers which appeared to me a lot as we only had maybe 200-300 followers." But the Riad became truly "famous" on Instagram after Bullen and her partner Jack Morris of @doyoutravel (1.6 million followers) posted that picture of themselves breakfasting by the pool. "We stayed there for a couple of nights in exchange for a post each," she said. "The posts went viral and now everyone wants to stay there and have the same picture ... Was a great deal for the hotel haha!!" Tassery wouldn't share more about how she tempts bloggers, whether with free rooms or other benefits. One travel Instagrammer planning her trip is Teri Yeung (1,208 followers).
Call it the social media generation’s version of a pilgrimage.
Hashtags and geotagging mean anyone can follow their favourite Instagrammer to even the most remote and most specific locations, tempted by their deliberately styled “un-style” and flawless tans.
Take Lauren Bullen, proprietor of the Instagram handle @gypsea_lust and at last count more than 825,000 followers. In mid-November, she accused one @diana_alexa of copying her travel photos down to juice stand and swimwear selection.
Many cried hoax on the whole situation, and Bullen has declined to talk further about the incident, even deleting the original post on her website.
Publicity stunt or not, these are the not uncommon pitfalls of travel Instagram. The world where the lucky few post pictures in exchange for subsidised travel to exotic locales, to which we, the thirsty masses, yearn to follow. Desperately, perhaps, in @diana_alexa’s case.
The double up was uncanny, down to the poolside breakfast situation.
Dabble for long in the world of travel Instagram, though, and you’ll find everyone is taking the same photo at the world’s most photogenic swimming pool.
Everyone that’s not you, of course, languishing in your office chair with a half eaten bagel.
You could take this as your best evidence yet of social media’s ability to homogenise anything, even a trip to Marrakech. But the pool’s owners are not mad about it, and they’re definitely not mad at @gypsea_lust, who they believe helped kick the whole thing off.
The lucky hotel is Riad Jasmine in Marrakech, Morocco. Run by a French couple, Gabriel Paris and Alice Tassery, it opened in 2002 and is owned by Gabriel’s father.
The pair took over in 2015, they told Mashable over email, renovating and setting in motion a whole new blogger-focused social media strategy.
Tassery, a former communications manager in France, said Riad Jasmine got started on Instagram in Sept. 2015.
“In February we had our first…
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