Has the quest for aesthetic travel gone too far?

As a former social media editor and now travel editor, I’ll be the first to admit that my dedication to taking aesthetic holiday content often goes too far. On holiday with family Kefalonia earlier this summer, I racked up over 1,500 photos and videos in just one week. On a five-day trip to Tuscany with friends, I returned with just under 1,000. My camera roll is filled with curated restaurant tablescapes, postcard-perfect sunsets and highlight reels of recent trips.

I repeatedly tell myself that I’m creating memories to look back on or am fully dedicated to my self-assigned role as the group photographer. But the truth might just simply be that I’m as addicted to social media as most twenty-somethings. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy flicking through old photos and videos or that my friends aren’t grateful for shared memories I’ve collected, but there comes a point on every holiday where I question whether my subconscious quest to create the ultimate travel aesthetic has gone too far.

Scrolling through Instagram, I can’t help but feel that others must feel these fears. “I love taking good photos and taking postcard-perfect images of places and people has become a hobby,” admits commerce editor Sarah Bannerman. “But I can’t just take one shot, and whenever I’m around others, I feel self-conscious about it – is it cooler to pretend I don’t care about stuff like this? The best reality check for me is when I go to capture something – usually a view – and it simply doesn’t translate on a screen. That’s the reminder to put the phone down and look with my eyes, not with my phone.”

If a cultural moment speaks to these fears, it must be the latest social media “airport tray aesthetic” trend. With more than 16 million related posts on TikTok, the trend involves travellers placing their hand luggage items into a security tray before snapping pictures and videos to post. Passports, cameras, plane tickets, beauty products and more are carefully coordinated and placed deliberately, often sorted by colour or size. This post by Shop Pursue quickly racked up 941k views, while this one by Chelsea, as of late, saw a similar reach (716k).

As aesthetically pleasing as the videos turn out, the trend has been the subject of heated debates online. Many claim that holding up already lengthy airport security queues or taking up valuable repacking stations for the sake of a social media post is incredibly selfish. In the pursuit of posting perfection, is self-awareness becoming less of a priority?

Sarah Allard, Condé Nast Traveller’s digital director, thinks so. “Picture the scene: you’re nearing the front of the airport security queue, hot, bothered and ever so slightly later than you’d planned,” she says. “You’ve just wrestled your hair straighteners out from the depths of your suitcase, squeezed your liquids into a tiny plastic bag and awkwardly untied your trainers, only to get to the front and find that the person in front of you is holding up the whole queue… to take pictures of their tray. While I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an Insta addict and most definitely guilty of taking way too many pictures on my travels, causing your fellow travellers extra stress during what is usually already a pretty stressful time is a step too far for me.”