From Views to Visits: Assessing the Impact of Algorithmic Recommendations on Japan’s "Hidden Gem" Destinations

The research aims to analyze the post-pandemic tourism landscape in Japan and the influence of short-vertical media content (SVC), such as TikTok videos, Instagram’s Reels and YouTube Shorts, in shaping international tourism destinations and habits within the framework of the contemporary Japanese economy. In recent years, Japan has seen a steady increase in international inbound tourism and an explosive growth in social media presence. Given the dominance, popularity and virality of SVCs in shaping customer behaviour, the ultimate goal of the study is to identify underlying correlations between SVCs visibility and tourism travel destination popularity by highlighting case studies of modern Japan’s overtourism as foundation of the analysis. The research adopts a mixed approach and it is articulated on two analytical parallel axes. Initially, data is collected from the SVC-based social media platform Instagram, by simulating four distinct social media user behaviours and preferences (null case, travel-focused, Japan-focused, intersection case), in order to draw a snapshot of Japan’s tourism image on foreign accounts, and the most sought-after travel destinations according to social media content. The data and conclusions drawn from the aforementioned analysis are compared against real case studies of recent overtourism phenomena in Japan. A case study about Ehime prefecture is conducted in order to analyze a tangible effect of the relationship between SVC and tourism. The case study aims to understand if SVC could possibly impact inbound tourism flux in the prefecture. In this comparison, a common pattern which links social media popularity and relevance to funneling tourism fluxes and ultimately to overtourism, comes to light.