From TikTok feeds to food queues: social-media-induced food tourism and tourist behaviour in Amsterdam

The popularity of TikTok has reshaped tourism practices, yet its role in driving urban visitor flows remains relatively underexplored. This exploratory qualitative study examines how TikTok content shapes gastronomy tourism practices in Amsterdam, where policies aimed at visitor dispersal increasingly intersect with digitally amplified concentrations at specific locations. Building on Shin and Xiang’s (2020) framework, the paper introduces the concept of social-media-induced food tourism. A combination of netnography, field observations, and visitor interviews reveal a cycle of consumption experiences: tourists consume digital content, reproduce it through physical visits and queuing, and then share new content that is amplified by the algorithm. This cycle produces performative participation, algorithmic temporality, spatial amplification, and reflexive ambivalence. The TikTok queue is revealed as a key performative space, where algorithm-created performance, aesthetic desire and sensory imaginaries produce a merging of the physical and digital space of the city. The study contributes theoretically by extending Shin and Xiang’s model with these four dimensions. It also demonstrates the need for tourism managers to anticipate and respond to platform-driven cycles of demand and micro-overtourism in order to better understand and manage urban tourism flows.