By Cindy Kirui
In an age where travellers seek sights, sensations and stories, countries that master storytelling using modern communication tools such as TikTok and Instagram will easily dominate global tourism. Already, South Korea, Iceland, and Singapore have transformed their tourism by repackaging the stories of their landscapes and cultures into compelling narratives that captivate millions. This confirms that in the digital era, the most powerful currency beyond infrastructure is emotional resonance. For Kenya, where youth drive innovation in spectacular ways these models offer a blueprint that can harness digital tools and generational creativity to turn “Magical Kenya” into an immersive story that commands attention while forging riveting visitor connections.
Arguably the world’s most peaceful nation for 17 uninterrupted years, Iceland, leverages tranquillity as its foundational story. But it pairs this with mythic storytelling that turns geysers, glaciers, and auroras into characters in epic sagas. Campaigns like “Hear the World” use volcanic acoustics and Viking folklore to create multisensory digital experiences while augmented reality (AR) apps overlay troll legends onto hiking trails. Meanwhile, user-generated content (UGC) campaigns invite travellers to share “Þetta reddast” (Icelandic for “it will all work out”) resilience stories. Kenya’s youth can—and indeed should—borrow a leaf from this model and weave stories of and about our unmatched attractions and wonders. By framing nature as sentient, Iceland has managed to transform passive site viewing into participatory myth-making, indeed a strategy Kenya’s Rift Valley or Maasai Mara could easily emulate.
Comparatively, no nation weaponises pop culture narratives quite like South Korea. When the historical drama Dae Jang Geum aired, it birthed a theme park where visitors cook royal cuisine and re-enact palace intrigue. Korea’s DMOs (Destination Marketing Organisations) collaborate with K-pop stars and TikTok creators to frame every temple visit or kimchi workshop as a “chapter” in a traveller’s personal adventure. Korea measures storytelling’s impact rigorously through repackaging indigenous knowledge and cultural depth to boost brand value as well as employing emotional pulls to forge “lovemarks” or if you like brands that are both loved and respected. As a result, South Korea welcomes an average of 20 million visitors annually, many of them under 30. Korea’s visitors seek identity-shaping journeys beyond mere photo ops.
Young Maasai morans. Photo courtesy/file
Elsewhere, Singapore merges hyper-modernity with myth through trans-media storytelling, a technique that disperses narratives across several platforms. For instance, Gardens by the Bay is more than just a park. It is a “futuristic Eden” explored via Instagram puzzles, TikTok lore drops, and AR treasure hunts. South Korea’s tourism board partners with Meta and Instagram to train creators in weaving user-generated content allowing easy shifts from glossy influencers to authentic micro-stories about local experiences. Treating tourism as a collaborative story-building system has yielded a model that allows visitors in South Korea to co-author narratives, thus blurring lines between consumer and creator. This approach has propelled South Korea into the top 5 most peaceful destinations globally.
Kenya needs no new landscapes or external storytellers. What we need are new narratives. With 75% of our population aged under 35, we have a huge untapped army of digital storytellers. With our reputation in cyber skills prowess we can launch “Digital Campfires” for co-creation as we emulate South Korea’s Digital Marketing Organisation’s framework by tasking youth collectives with developing county-based “story hubs.” Using apps like Terrastory (geo-located oral histories), our youth can layer local legends onto safari routes and tourism circuits onto craft-market visits. For good measure and as research confirms, stories with educability and uniqueness amplify brand value more than generic ads.
Photo of tourists engaging with locals. Photo credit/file
Our young men and women can gamify heritage through augmented realities the Iceland way. Kenya could create an app like “Pilipili, “Karafuu”, “Iliki” or “Kachumbari” Tales,” where travellers collect spice-trade stories in Lamu or solve conservation puzzles in Ol Pejeta. A study on narrative psychology maintains that such gamification boosts engagement by 300%.
Also, our youth can partner with, say, Kenyatta University TV and TikTok creators to train hundreds of young Kenyans in “digital griot” techniques to enable them produce short-form videos fusing Swahili proverbs with wildlife conservation or coastal cuisine. As UN Tourism—formerly United Nations World Organisation (UNWTO), notes, modern travellers crave content linking tourism to local cultures and experiences.
Besides, our youth can adopt Singapore’s trans-media storytelling architecture where Magical Kenya’s marvels are offered in captivating podcasts, Instagram reels and WhatsApp micro-documentaries. This narrative ecosystem and storytelling design has been known to triple destination recall.
To incentivise youthful storytellers, we can look for resources to power county-level story incubators, reward creators with revenue shares, and measure success in arrivals over and above the lure created by the narratives woven by our very own young men and women.
As tourism storytelling guru Gianna Moscardo rightly says, “Tourists don’t choose places; they choose the stories they wish to enter—and eventually, become.”
Cindy is a budding music scholar, human rights activist and a commentator on social affairs.
