Science and Nature news
Geotagging of destinations is widely lamented for fueling overtourism, but now is being used to help travelers with disabilities, aid in wildlife conservation, and showcase forgotten Black history. When tourists upload images or videos to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or X (formerly Twitter), they commonly use geotagging, which attaches their GPS coordinates.
This allows them to document their travels, but can also trigger a deluge of visitors to heavily geotagged spots, like Arizona’s Horseshoe Bend, which became more littered. On the flip side, geotagging is increasingly being used in positive ways, helping to address environmental and social issues, and even crowding, according to tourism experts.
Emerging benefits of geotagging
Aiding tourists with disabilities is one of several upsides to geotagging, says Ulrich Gunter, professor of tourism economics at Modul University Vienna in Austria. Google Maps has a function that shows wheelchair-accessible routes through many of the world’s major cities, based on geotagging of accessible ramps, lifts, and car parks.
The Wheelmap app also employs geotagging to show its users more than 1 million accessible restaurants, bars, shops, toilets, bus stops, museums, and cinemas in dozens of countries. Vision-impaired tourists, meanwhile, can use Blindsquare, which pairs with GPS apps to offer audio explanations of nearby attractions.
Data from geotagging is also helping tackle overtourism, according to Gunter. It lets map apps inform users of the busiest times of day at an attraction, like Paris’s iconic Eiffel Tower, so they can avoid crowds. Some tourism organizations use such data to, via their own apps, steer tourists away from busy spots to quieter attractions nearby.
How geotagging can drive overtourism
At the same time, tourists can harm a destination by geotagging it, warns Greg Richards, professor of placemaking and events at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Amsterdam is experiencing a blight dubbed the “TikTok queue,” where tourists swarm the same few geotagged restaurants or cafes trending on social media so they can film similar videos to post online.
TikTok queues cause commotion, crowding, and littering, Richards explains. Some venues are so inundated, like Amsterdam’s Fabel Fries restaurant, that they now have two lines, one for regular customers, and another for content creators.
Geotagging can also harm natural locations, like South Africa’s Kruger National Park, where poachers tracked endangered animals via social media posts. Such spots which are widely geotagged often suffer “soil erosion, habitat destruction, and depletion of local flora and fauna due to uncontrolled visitor activities,” says Natalia Bayona, executive director at the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).
Protecting the environment via geomapping
Fortunately, geotagging by travelers can have benefits for wilderness destinations, Bayona adds. This technology is being used by tourists to aid citizen science projects, such as wildlife tracking and environmental monitoring.
“By sharing the location of various flora and fauna, or reporting instances of littering and pollution, tourists can help local authorities and conservationists better understand ecological trends and challenges,” she says. “This grassroots approach not only empowers travelers by giving them a sense of agency in preserving the destinations they love, but also fosters a deeper connection between tourists and the local environment.”
The geotagging and augmented reality combo
Geotagging is also assisting worthy social causes, particularly via its increasing use in combination with augmented reality (AR) technology, Bayona says. AR apps, like Google Lens, layer digital images and information over the user’s surroundings. As they explore a location, their phone’s GPS tracks their movement, and the AR app alerts them to nearby points of interest.
An inspiring example is the soon-to-be-launched app Mapping Blackness, which will utilize geotagging to guide users to historic sites within forgotten Black communities across the U.S. This app will also use AR, documentaries, 3-D renderings, and 360-degree virtual reality imagery to tell the tales of those communities, like the Okemah neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona, founded by Black migrants in 1927. Mapping Blackness was created by Carla LynDale Bishop, assistant professor of film and media production at Arizona State University.
Geotagging has evolved far beyond the simple act of checking into a restaurant, museum, or landmark on social media. What began as a novelty, then turned into a curse of sorts, is now starting to offer blessings.
