Who answers when travellers search for your destination?
Destination marketing now happens in search. Travellers type specific questions into TikTok, Instagram, Xiaohongshu and AI assistants long before they book. SocialSeal shows tourism boards which of those searches matter in each source market, who answers them today, and where the official voice is missing.
New Zealand, 21 October 2026
Official tourism accounts held 0.6% of the results
Across 73 New Zealand travel searches on TikTok and Instagram from Japan, Singapore and India, official tourism bodies held 8 of 1,408 result slots in the top 20. Tourism New Zealand's own account held none. Independent creators held about four in five.
Neither Hobbiton Movie Set nor Fergburger appeared from their own accounts, even for searches that name them. Other people's videos answered those questions.
The official results we did find were direct answers to the search. Visit Auckland ranked first on Instagram in Singapore for "auckland cafe hopping", with a post about Auckland's cafes. Glacier Country appeared for a Japanese glacier-walk search with a post about a glacier-valley walk. Official content can rank when it answers the question being asked.
| Platform | Market | Creators | Businesses | Official |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok | Singapore | 93.0% | 6.3% | 0.7% |
| TikTok | Japan | 91.4% | 8.3% | 0.3% |
| Japan | 84.6% | 15.0% | 0.3% | |
| Singapore | 75.7% | 22.7% | 1.6% | |
| India | 73.7% | 26.3% | 0% |
Businesses include tour operators, attractions, hotels, restaurants, rental companies, OTAs and agencies. A spot check suggests creator shares may be up to 6 points high. See the methodology.
Travellers search for answers, not slogans
The searches are specific and practical. Is it worth it? How long does the walk take? Where can I eat halal? A campaign film doesn't answer those questions. A creator's short video does, so the creator ranks.
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"Fergburger worth it"
TikTok, Singapore
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"Hooker Valley track guide"
TikTok, Singapore
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"Halal food Christchurch"
TikTok, Singapore
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"Milford Sound scenic flight"
TikTok, Singapore
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"ニュージーランド 氷河ウォーク (glacier walk)"
Instagram and TikTok, Japan
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"新西兰南岛自驾 (South Island self-drive)"
Xiaohongshu, China
Each source market asks differently. In our New Zealand research, China wanted the must-do list, Japan wanted every detail in Japanese, Singapore wanted the trending micro-attractions and India wanted the whole day mapped out. One global campaign can't answer all four.
AI answers cite social video too
Google's AI answers already draw on social video. In a first sample of 25 Google AI Overviews for marketing questions (US, October 2026), 28% of the cited sources were videos or social posts.
We're now measuring the same thing for the searches travellers make. If the pattern holds, a destination that's missing from social search will also be missing from many AI answers.
Intent Matching
How we help tourism boards win the search, not the feed
We call this social search visibility: how often your destination's own voice appears in the results travellers see when they search. Our method has four steps.
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1. Map the demand
We measure what travellers in each source market search for your destination, in their own language and on the platforms they use, grouped by trip stage.
A ranked list of the searches that matter, market by market.
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2. Find the gaps
For each search we record who appears: your official accounts, your operators and hotels, creators, OTAs and publishers.
Your share of search, and the searches where the official voice is missing.
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3. Brief to the gap
Each gap becomes a brief for your team, your creator partners or your industry partners, based on what already ranks for that search.
Creator-ready briefs with the evidence attached.
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4. Prove the change
We re-measure the same searches every month, so you can see which campaigns and creator partnerships changed what travellers find.
Before-and-after visibility by search and market.
Most tourism boards already work with creators. The difference is choosing those partnerships by search: brief the creator who already ranks for the question your travellers ask, then measure whether the official answer gets found.
Methodology
- Searches: 73 New Zealand travel searches tracked for our Social Snippets report The Asian Traveller & Intent to New Zealand, written in each market's language: TikTok from Japan and Singapore, Instagram from India, Japan and Singapore. We also track 17 Xiaohongshu searches from China, but they aren't counted here because account owners can't be identified from our export.
- Observation window: the latest capture of each search on 21 October 2026, top 20 results per search, giving 1,408 result slots. The market is the country the search was run from, not a verified viewer location.
- Classification: we classed each result's account as an official tourism body (national or regional tourism organisation), a business (operators, attractions, hotels, restaurants, rental companies, OTAs, agencies, media) or an independent creator. We searched for official national, regional and attraction accounts by name.
- Limits: classification uses account names and captions. A random check of 40 accounts classed as creators found about 3 businesses, so creator shares may be up to 6 points high. The official count is not affected. Results show what surfaced for these searches, not total demand.
- Source: research by SocialSeal for Social Snippets, a Web In Travel brand.
See who answers for your destination
A Visibility Check measures, for your destination and source markets, how often travellers find your official accounts, your industry partners and creators when they search. It's delivered within three business days.