What do travel influencers have against reality?

Travel influencers Jake and Nina Hewson weren’t afraid to flaunt their perfect honeymoon ‘experience’.

I had seen them at work before, behind shop windows, inside restaurants, charging through cities, but never in such close quarters and never with such obvious contempt for their true surroundings.

We were standing at the edge of the long pavilion, looking down to the ocean when we first spotted them by the poolside bar, posing up and selling their wares in a set piece to camera. It took less than a minute to realise we’d just caught sight of the island’s resident travel influencers, Jake and Nina Hewson, who, like us, had recently arrived on their honeymoon.

We knew this because it was inscribed on a small, flashing neon sign, framed in the shape of a love heart, which they carried with them around the island for the duration of their stay, as if to remind themselves or anybody else who cared why they were there in the first place.

As you’d expect, the Hewsons were a photogenic duo: Jake with the chiseled torso, manky moustache and slightly dull eyes; Nina with the flaxen blonde hair, bikini and dish-shaped sunglasses. Their surname was not actually Hewson, of course. Even their first names are made-up. But Jake and Nina were real people, so far as we could tell, who’d travelled all the way from New York to this sunny little island off mainland Australia, with one purpose in mind: to capture the perfect honeymoon experience for their adoring followers – and they weren’t about to let reality get in the way.

“Hi guys, it’s day two of our honeymoon,” Nina would holler into her phone at breakfast. “We’ve just finished our morning yoga routine and we’re starting the day’s adventures with some simple muesli, fruit and pastries. Delish!”

And so their script went, hour after hour, day after day, right across the island, with only minor yet predictable variations in between: “Hi there guys, it’s (insert day) of our honeymoon and we’ve just (insert delicious sounding meal, spa treatment or mindless activity).”

After observing the Hewsons for almost a week, I realise I have two serious problems with influencers. The first is they trade almost exclusively in misery, envy and deception, with the aim of making themselves appear exceptional and everybody else feel grey and ­inadequate.

Defenders of the faith will say they’re delivering a double-shot of inspiration and aspiration to their followers, perhaps they’re even being entrepreneurial or contributing to local tourism. But nothing can ever be commonplace or prosaic. That would spoil the illusion. Unless of course it’s a sob story about how hectic their successful lives are and how boss they are for managing it all.

The job of influencing necessarily begins by blocking out all external phenomena that could interfere with the creative process; anything that gets in the way of the perfectly instagrammable moment or somehow prevents you from metamorphosing into a walking avatar of yourself is superfluous.

My second problem is influencers make for crafty colonisers. If there’s a secluded spot, perfect for a champagne and cheese board sunset, you can bet London to a brick they’ll already be there, hoisting the flag high, declaring the land conquered and settled in the name of the good burghers of Instagram and TikTok.

Now I won’t say the Hewsons weren’t human; that would be cruel, but they certainly didn’t show much interest in other humans, unless of course it concerned ordering a cocktail or asking passers-by if they would enjoy the privilege of a walk-on part in one of their choreographed masterpieces.

In the end, it was never quite clear who the Hewsons were trying to influence, or why they felt the need to influence anyone at all. Perhaps it was money. But none of that seemed to matter. What really mattered was they were ready to share and simulcast their amorous sojourn to anyone who was prepared to buy into the whole charade.

I never did get them, the influencers.