Goodbye to bricks and mortar – and real people.

There was considerable media coverage of the fact that Paris closed its last physical tourist information office this week. Le Monde posed the pertinent question: “Do tourist offices still serve a purpose?”

One can think of many purposes for physical tourist offices, of course:

·       Finding somewhere to hide from the rain

·       Talking to a local

·       Getting a real map of the city

·       Answering the (sometimes difficult) question of where you come from

·       Finding some souvenirs not made in China

However, none of these reasons, however valid they may be, are likely to encourage a Destination Marketing Organisation (or anybody else) to fund a tourist office. What they are hoping to do is to make tourists feel welcome, increase their satisfaction and steer them in the direction of places they can spend their money and not annoy the locals.

Remember real maps?

But, as the Daily Telegraph observed, it is au revoir to the tourist office... and bienvenue to TikTok. Much cheaper to run, as far as the destination is concerned, but will it make people feel welcome or increase their satisfaction? One can also wonder what kinds of sights the new TikTok visitor will be directed to. As previous research has shown, social media tends to produce an ‘information cascade’ which reinforces the popularity of places already crowded with tourists. A quick perusal of the TikTok feed for Paris, for example, leads to a plethora of items, often featuring the Eiffel Tower or Montmartre.

Apart from encouraging people to go where all the other tourists are, there are some TikTok items offering ‘non touristy things to do’. These apparently include things like sitting on the ground while sipping wine and eating ice cream. Just like in many other cities TikTok features food experiences (as opposed to gastronomy) heavily. In Paris there are ‘must try sandwiches’, frites and the BO&MIE bakery (of which there are 5 in Paris, and 1 in Barcelona – other outlets arriving soon). It seems likely that TikTok will quickly strengthen the information cascade in Paris, Barcelona and other cities, leading to the TikTok Queue phenomenon already visible in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam TikTok queue

So the death of physical tourist information office is likely to signal a major shift in the way in which tourists consume cities. Job satisfaction may increase among the few remaining tourist office employees as they spend their time creating TikTok content rather than pointing yet another visitor in the direction of the Louvre. But the effect of getting rid of real people is likely to be the reverse of what most cities want – more tourists winding up at the same places, trying to get a photo of that must-see attraction without any other tourists in it.