Research summary
Respondents said the platform shows them places they had never heard of — and, in the same breath, that exaggerated content is common
Summarising the article
TikTok as a Powerful Tool for Showcasing Philippine Destinations: Its Influence on Tourism and Digital Marketing
Dr. Robbie Jan Vincent T. Buelo · Psychology and Education: A Multidisciplinary Journal · 2025
The question
Short-form video has become a main channel for travel research. This study asked students of tourism management, hospitality management and information technology how they see the platform, both as viewers and as people who have to make the content themselves.
How it was done
An online questionnaire administered through Google Forms to 150 undergraduates at a private university in Manila across three programmes — tourism management, hospitality management and information technology. Opinions were captured on a rating scale and reported as per-item means with verbal interpretations.
What it found
- The highest-scoring item concerned the algorithm. Respondents agreed most strongly that the algorithm determines how far travel content travels — visibility is not a function of the clip's quality alone.
- Respondents trusted and doubted the platform at once. The item saying it provides reliable information and the item saying misleading or exaggerated travel content is common both scored high within the same block of questions.
- What respondents said was hard was telling genuine recommendations from sponsored content, one of the highest-scoring items.
- The picture of the platform spreading attention to lesser-known places did not come through cleanly: the item saying the content seen is repetitive and confined to popular destinations scored as highly as the item saying the platform surfaces hidden spots.
- The lowest-scoring item was that the diversity of creators helps with travel planning, suggesting respondents turn elsewhere once planning gets specific.
Why it matters
For any agency or operator considering short-form video for destination promotion, two things follow. Visibility is governed by platform mechanics enough that it has to be planned for rather than assumed to follow good content. And when viewers themselves report being unable to separate genuine recommendations from sponsored ones, labelling sponsorship clearly becomes a matter of long-term credibility rather than mere compliance.
Limits to know before citing this
The sample is 150 students at a single university in one city, not travellers in general, and what was measured is opinion rather than actual travel behaviour. The article's abstract discusses economic effects, over-tourism, environmental degradation and sustainability, none of which this questionnaire measured; this summary therefore follows the results tables only, as the centre does for every summary. The article reports two overlapping sets of items covering the same ground with differing means, without explaining how the two sets differ, so we report only the patterns that hold across both and do not treat any individual figure as a conclusion.
Cite this work
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Datu, A., Condez, D. N., Buelo, R. J. V., Sabado, C., Soriano, C., Datu, J., Minay, J., & Bingayen, E. (2025). TikTok as a powerful tool for showcasing Philippine destinations: Its influence on tourism and digital marketing. Psychology and Education: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 36(2), 237-245. https://doi.org/10.70838/pemj.360210
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