Last Updated on January 25, 2026
Content creators and bloggers are often called “influencers” because, well, we have influence. As creators, we play a huge role in the travel industry because we can shape and impact our audience’s travel decisions.
That said, people who don’t have an online audience have influence, too! Posting about your vacation to your personal Instagram, or telling a family member about a recent trip, may influence the travel decisions that people within your circles make.
Regardless of audience size, it’s crucial to consider the messages we send when we create and share content, and when we talk to others about our travel experiences. Through video, photos, and words, we create a story about the places we visit, and those stories have impact.
This is why it’s so important to take a mindful approach when taking and sharing travel photos and videos for social media and other online channels. Read on to learn 8 simple tips for creating responsible travel photos and videos, which respects the places and people you visit.
I’ve been creating content across my blog, podcast, and social media since 2019.
8 Tips For Responsible Travel Content Creation
I’ve long been dedicated to learning about sustainable travel solutions and how to become a more responsible tourist. It all started when I was 20 years old, working in a hostel in Venice, Italy. Living in one of Europe’s most over-touristed cities gave me a perspective of tourism I hadn’t faced before. In my months living there, I learned first-hand the positive, and negative impacts that tourists can have on a place.
After my experience living in Venice, I continued to think critically about tourism, and about my role as a tourist. Over the years, this thinking has slowly changed the way I travel as I learn about more responsible ways to travel, and shift my travel practices to reflect that. As part of this, I’ve become much more cognizant of how I capture and share travel content, too.
Below are 8 tips that I’ve learned over the years, for creating travel content in a mindful way.
1. Follow and Share Local Rules and Requests
It’s important to assume that wherever you are visiting may have different rules and cultural norms than what you’re used to at home. The best way to be respectful of these rules and norms is to take some time to learn what they are, follow them, and encourage your audience to do the same.
For example, while road-tripping in Iceland, you’ll often notice signs at popular sites that share important notices. Some remind you not to hike off-trail (you can damage ancient moss!) and others will warn you to be careful of rogue waves on a beach.
Taking note of and following the recommendations like these is meant to ensure you’re respectful of the place you’re visiting, and that you are safe. This practice applies to cultural norms, too.
For example, before entering temples in Sri Lanka you are requested to remove your shoes. This religious practice is the norm for visiting many sacred sites around the world. By modeling behavior that follows the local guidelines and cultural norms of a place, you can help educate other travelers about these norms.
2. Take Photos and Videos With Respect
It’s tempting to take photos of, well, everything when you’re traveling. And I get it, it’s fun to take photos of local people. But taking photos and video needs to be intentional, and respectful to other people and cultures.
In some places around the world, people don’t want to be photographed for religious reasons. And in some countries, it’s actually illegal to take a photo of a stranger. For example, privacy laws in parts of Europe require express consent to take a recognizable photo of someone, even in public spaces. And you can’t publish images of strangers without permission.
The bottom line is that regardless of official law, all people have a right to their privacy. The best way to respect that is by being mindful of how you take photos and videos.
So how can you shoot photos and videos with respect?
Start by asking for consent when taking a photo or video that includes a person in it, and if you plan to share it online, ask that person if that’s okay too. When asking a person for a photo, consider the power dynamics and the context of your request.
Of course, you don’t want to lose the essence of a place when taking photos and videos. It can be difficult to show your audience a busy market, for example, without showing at least a few people – who you may not be able to individually ask for consent.
When shooting photos and videos in busy places, there’s a few things you can do to respect people’s privacy. First, spend a few minutes waiting for the right moment, when most backs are turned. If you do end up capturing faces, you can do some artful cropping, keep the clip brief, or blur the face so it isn’t recognizable.
Blurring faces, darkening shadows, and shooting in moments when people’s backs are turned are some of the ways that you can respectfully share photos.
3. Be Mindful of Your Travel Language
It’s important to consider the message you send not just through photos and videos – but through words, too.
The language we use can perpetuate colonial undertones, or harmful stereotypes. For example, commonly used words like “colonial,” “explore,” and “exotic” may have at one point described desirable places to go. But today, they can be perceived as subtly signaling otherness, and even as glamorizing colonial histories
When traveling, it’s impossible to ignore the colonial legacies that many countries around the world are still impacted by. The tradition of travel writing actually is connected to the history of field note-taking of 16th-century colonizers. These people took notes as a way of gathering knowledge of the people and cultures they encountered, but unfortunately, it was often a way to justify colonial activities.
This history of colonialism is why it’s so important today to avoid the clichéd language that was once so common.
When writing captions for social media, composing scripts for videos, or writing articles and blogs, carefully consider the meaning behind the words you use. Avoid sharing words that have an undertone of white saviorism or ethnocentrism, and avoid using language that promotes stereotypes.
4. Avoid Using Travel Cliches
A cliché is defined as something that has been overused, or that portrays a lack of original thought. Clichés can be a word, as well as a concept. For example, “the grass is always greener on the other side” is a common cliché.
When it comes to travel and tourism, there are plenty of common clichés. They’re used by regular travelers in conversation and on social media, and they’re also conveyed by travel writers, bloggers, influencers, and destination management organizations (DMOs).
Some clichés have the potential to be harmful, while others are just platitudes. “The grass is always greener” cliché, for example, doesn’t carry a bad meaning in most situations.
In travel, however, some clichés can perpetuate harmful stereotypes, and others can oversimplify a country or a place, overlooking the nuances of culture. When creating travel content, be mindful of any clichés that you may be including, and whether they could be harmful.
A common travel cliché that I recommend avoiding in travel content is framing locations as hidden gems, or as being “untouched” or “undiscovered.”
While these common clichés may seem harmless, there’s a colonial undertone to them. When people seek out hidden gem travel spots, or describe spots as hidden gems, there’s an insinuation that it’s a location that most other people don’t know.
While some places may be lesser traveled or lesser visited, in most cases, they are known to Indigenous communities or local communities. Framing them as “hidden gems” can contribute to erasure of this Indigenous and/or local knowledge.
There isn’t anything wrong with being interested in visiting lesser-known places or locations, but it’s important to be cognizant of the undertones used to describe them.
When writing about, or talking about a “hidden gem,” you can leave that language out, and instead acknowledge the people and history of that place.
5. Promote Places that Want Tourism
Travel content creators don’t need to promote places like Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Hawaii. These places have more than enough tourism. In fact, they are grappling with the symptoms of overtourism.
One of the best ways to diffuse the impact of overtourism around the world is to spread tourism out. This can mean encouraging people to travel to places that don’t typically appear on the trending travel lists. But it can also mean approaching popular places in a mindful way. For example, if you want to share travel in Iceland, consider road-tripping around the least-visited region of the country – the Westfjords.
Content creators can have a more positive impact by focusing on highlighting tourism in lesser-traveled regions. And when you’re sharing an already popular place, weave in context – mention issues around overtourism and how people can minimize their impact. For example, encourage people to visit in the off-season.
Along with considering the places you choose to share, be mindful of how you model travel in those places. Do your best to promote an approach to travel that is responsible. You can encourage your audience to, for example, support local hotels, guesthouses, and homestays, and hire local guides.
6. Be Respectful of Wildlife
Bathing elephants, swimming with sharks, and posing with tigers is super popular amongst tourists, especially when you look on Instagram.
Travelers, friends, family, celebrities, influencers all post selfies with wild animals because, well – photos with animals get a lot of likes. But of course what we see on Instagram isn’t the whole story.
Travelers, and the viewers that follow their adventures, are usually unaware of the reality of life for the animals they meet. And it’s no one’s fault, really. What’s happening behind the scenes of wildlife tourism isn’t meant to be seen.
Wildlife tourism can lead to the exploitation of animals because it’s an industry driven by profit, and there is so much “unseen” within the industry. A few minutes spent posing for a photo with an elephant in a sanctuary don’t tell the full story of that elephant’s life.
Elephants who are in captivity in Thailand have been trained for human interaction, often using pain and fear based methods. This means that no matter what kind of interaction you have with an elephant, you can assume that the elephant had to be trained to participate in the interaction.
Most people love animals, and want to be close to them. This is why animal exploitation is so easily perpetuated in wildlife tourism. The other problem is that the average person isn’t trained to know the signs of stress or pain in animals. It’s easy to think an animal looks happy, when in fact, it isn’t.
The bottom line is that wild animals are not for entertainment or viral content.
If you want to share wildlife, share experiences that promote observation only encounters. We all know by now that riding elephants isn’t great. But now, we need to share the message that actually any animal interaction should be avoided – This includes feeding and bathing.
7. Provide Context for What You Share
When sharing content online, it’s very easy to share places and experiences without context. A short Instagram reel might not have enough time for it, and it might not seem relevant to a travel guide.
For example, when sharing a video that covers the places in the world where you felt unsafe, context is so important. Safety often is a perception, and that perception can be shaped by several things, ranging from what we see in the media, to problematic stereotypes, and then of course our own intersectional identities, our personal boundaries, and more.
While I have felt safe in most European countries, I have friends of different ethnicities who’ve experienced microaggressions that make them feel a lot less safe than I do in those same places.
Similarly, my husband has felt safe in many places that I don’t, because I’ve been socialized, as a woman, to have my guard up in different ways than he has.
Because of the complexity of experiences, it’s important to always contextualize your travel content. This could mean acknowledging your personal identity and how it may have shaped your experience.
In other cases, it could mean providing more detail about a place or experience. For example, if you’re writing a blog about traveling in Cuba, it’s important to provide information about the US embargo on Cuba. The embargo impacts the Cuban local way of life, and can have an impact on how a person travels there, too.
Creating travel content that includes context is more responsible, and benefits you too! Including context leads to in-depth, valuable content that your audience will appreciate.
8. Uplift Your Travel Community
Creating travel content can be lonely, and so it’s important to create a community for yourself, and uplift that community of content creators. How can you do this? Don’t view other creators as competition. Support their content by engaging with it, and share tips with each other.
Uplifting your community is especially important in the context of diversity in the travel industry. Travel media continues to be very white, with little representation of Black travelers, and travelers of other ethnicities too.
This is a problem because it signals a lack of diversity and equity in the travel industry – white creators and bloggers are being hired more, and paid more, which is not equitable. And, travel media that is overwhelmingly white simply doesn’t represent who is traveling. Travelers are diverse, and travel media should be, too.
As travel creators, we can support diversifying travel media through our community. Create a diverse community, and recommend your community to others.
For example, if you work with a brand or a DMO (destination marketing organization), put forward the names of trusted creators in your network to work with them, too.
Final Thoughts: Creating Mindful Travel Content
Awareness of the pros and cons of tourism is growing, and I’m noticing that people are increasingly interested in how to be a responsible tourist.
In my mind, being a responsible tourist means being thoughtful as well about how we share and portray our travels. Words, images, and videos are powerful and form messages – it’s important to recognize their impact.
When taking photos and videos while traveling, be mindful and respectful of the people and places you’re capturing. Always ask for permission before photographing someone, especially in culturally sensitive settings, and be prepared to accept a “no” gracefully.
Avoid treating people as props or exoticizing local communities—photos and videos should honour their dignity and privacy. My rule of thumb is to always pause and ask myself, what is my intention in taking this photo or video. The goal should always be to uplift rather than exploit.
This list of ways to take responsible travel photos and videos isn’t conclusive. Responsible tourism is an ongoing journey, and as we learn more about it, we can shift to better practices. It isn’t a race! The best we can do is make small, impactful changes, as we learn more.
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