The Problem With Measuring a Destination in Likes

A like is one of the cheapest signals a person can send. It costs a thumb movement and about a quarter of a second, and it says almost nothing: not that someone read the caption, not that they remember which destination it was an hour later, not that they have any intention of going. Tourism boards report these numbers anyway, because they are the numbers the platforms hand over, and because a chart that goes up is easier to present in a meeting than an honest shrug.

The harder question, the one usually left out of the slide deck, is what actually moves someone from watching a destination to booking a flight to it. Nobody seriously believes it is the like button. It is closer to something slower: a growing, half-conscious familiarity with a place, built up over repeated, unhurried exposure, until going there stops feeling like a leap and starts feeling like something they were already halfway planning.

That kind of familiarity does not show up in an engagement report, because it is not built in a single viral moment. It is built by someone leaving a window open on a train line through your region for an hour while they work, or half-watching a coastal road at dinner time for a few evenings in a row. Nobody is going to like that. They are just going to end up knowing your destination in a way a fifteen-second clip cannot manufacture.

That is the number we would rather be judged on: not likes, but time. Hours a real place has spent quietly keeping someone company, whether or not anyone ever clicked anything at all. If your destination has a journey worth being measured that way, tell us about it.