Twitter (and its social media cousins at Facebook and Instagram) has ensured hashtags have become part of modern digital vernacular.
The use of hashtags has become popular in areas as diverse as politics, sports, music and, of course, travel-related tweets or to accompany pictures on Instagram or status updates on Facebook.
British online travel agency Sunshine.co.uk decided to figure out which hashtags are the most popular amongst UK leisure travel consumers, as part of an ongoing study into their social media habits.
Unsurprisingly, 42% of the 2,100 people who took part in the study said that they posted updates to their social media accounts during a trip, but some three quarters of those doing so also used hashtags as part of their comments.
The most popular hashtags (bearing in mind the respondents are British):
- #holiday – 91%
- #WishYouWereHere – 57%
- #YOLO – 44% ("You only live once")
- #sun – 41%
- #beach – 39%
- #tanlines – 35%
- #bikini – 28%
- #cocktails – 22%
- #sunshine – 19%
- #lovinglife – 16%
Whilst the use of hashtags in other sectors is often around ensuring a particular piece of content (tweet, image, etc) appears in widely followed lists, only 12% of those in the study who use them said it was an attempt to increase their follower count.
Just over half (51%) said it was simply to make people envious or jealous of a trip.
Managing director Chris Clarkson says:
"To see that so many use hashtags with their holiday statuses to make others jealous is really actually quite comical when you see that #WishYouWereHere is one of the most popular holiday hashtags used. Clearly, they don’t wish their followers were there with them and they just want to turn them into green eyed monsters.
"I thought most people used hashtags to increase the reach of their photos and gain more followers or likes, but that’s really not the case."
NB: Hashtag summer image Shutterstock.