There was a time when luxurious vacation destinations, including the Hamptons and Nantucket Island, were places to see and be seen. Now, they're places to post and be posted.
The transformation didn’t happen overnight. The Hamptons, specifically, have long been a destination built around visibility: who is there, where they are going, and what they are doing. But social media has turned that voyeurism into an industry. This summer, branded pop-ups, beauty launches, wellness events, and beach club takeovers filled the East End of Long Island, with creators often at the center of them.
This comes at a moment when influencers themselves are facing more scrutiny. From their not-so-welcome infiltration of the US Open, making TikToks instead of watching match points, to the backlash surrounding OpenAI’s recent brand trip, the question of who these experiences are actually for, and who these spaces belong to has become harder to ignore.
As vacation hotspots become increasingly saturated with influencers, simply bringing creators may no longer be enough. The proliferation of these experiences raises a question for brands heading into next summer: What happens when everyone is creating the same kind of “moment”?
Getting ahead of the next phase of influencer marketing may mean designing experiences that serve multiple purposes: giving creators content worth sharing, consumers something memorable, and brands an impact that lasts beyond a single weekend.
There must be a balance between creating an inspiring space that captures the “suspended reality” of these destinations while still feeling authentic, according to Melissa Gonzalez, experiential retail strategist and founder of MG2 Advisory. “It starts to feel performative when people keep seeing another pretty table[scape], another nice outfit, and so on until they tune it out,” she told BeautyMatter.
The answer to this tension may not be to choose between influencers and everyone else. Brands have already begun to shift from massive, extravagant brand trips to smaller, more curated ones that feel more intentional, with both the activities and people invited designed to reach an engaged, core audience.
Lindsay Silberman, a former travel and beauty editor, creator, and founder of Hotel Lobby Candle offers one example. Inspired by the scent of high-end boutique hotels, the brand has luxury destinations woven into its identity. For Silberman, telling a destination’s story without turning it into a promotional backdrop is central to how she approaches brand trips.
This past summer, the brand brought 12 influencers with varying follower counts to Nantucket for a three-day brand trip celebrating the launch of its summer collection, inspired by the island’s strawberry fields and wild roses. Acutely aware of the fact that brand trips can feel exploitative,and of Nantucket’s already intense exposure, Silberman took a deliberately local approach. She worked with local businesses and community members throughout the trip, from the photographer and artists who illustrated guests’ candle boxes to the businesses that supplied the gifts.
Brands can learn from this, creating more distinctive experiences by engaging with the communities and traditions that make the destination unique, while giving creators and consumers a more meaningful way to participate.
“I understand the nuances of the island and the people that work there,” Silberman told BeautyMatter. “I made sure it didn't feel exploitative. I know there is a preconceived idea about the way people just blow into the island– everyone's taking pictures and they're not giving back to the economy. But we were absolutely mindful of not being that way.”
That kind of intentionality is one way to make brand trips feel more grounded. Another is to stop treating creators and consumers as separate audiences.
“No matter the label—consumer or creator—we’re all human beings with emotional triggers,” Steven Hakim, Director of Partnerships at full-service experiential agency CNC Agency, told BeautyMatter.
Hakim argues the design process must shift from curating key moments for creators to ensuring that every touchpoint holds up.
“You're not just designing for a content calendar anymore, you're designing for a room where anyone could be the one who makes it go viral,” he said.
Luxury destinations have been uniquely susceptible to this in recent years. Experiential marketing used to rely on brands and agencies creating impressive, exclusive physical moments and inviting the right people who could amplify the brand’s messaging on social media. But, nowadays, anyone can be a creator, and algorithms have changed. As people now see social media content based on interests rather than simply who they follow, the distinction between influencer and audience has become less useful.
There is also an inherent contradiction in making an already exclusive place increasingly visible, regardless of who is doing the posting.
“It’s a little ironic to be overexposing a place, brand, or a product in an area that is gate-kept,” Sara McCord, communications and marketing strategist and founder and CEO of Sara McCord Communications told BeautyMatter. “There’s been historic voyeurism about what people vacationing there are doing and enjoying; mixed with part-fascination, part-jealousy, part-annoyance, part-feeling-excluded, part-‘oh wait I want to try that, too.’”
The Hamptons’ appeal has long been tied, at least in part, to seeing something that not everyone is invited to.
For influencers, however, the exclusivity of the destination may be part of the appeal. After all, they built their followings by posting their extravagant lives. To a degree, they are like celebrities: their lives aren’t meant to feel all that similar to ours. According to McCord, the problem arises when content creation detracts from the real-world experience—particularly when an activation feels designed for creators rather than as part of a broader ecosystem.
Still, it’s important to understand why influencers are so valuable.
For CNC Agency, they are central to what they call their “tease, launch, and sustain” strategy. In the tease phase, influencers are able to build “pre-event buzz before anything goes live.” Then, in the “sustain” phase, they help “keep the momentum going after the experiential moment ends,” said Hakim. “Experiences aren't cheap, and without a full 360 strategy in place, an event doesn't live beyond the day it happens. Influencers are a key driver of making sure it does.”
Influencer content can also translate into actual business results, including brand awareness, sales, and engagement. Silberman attests that content posted by Hotel Lobby Candle and the influencers during a trip is “without fail our top-performing content,” and is often followed by a spike in sales. The brand’s retail sales have quadrupled since 2024.
“A lot of consumers appreciate good marketing and thoughtfulness,” she said. “They don't necessarily look at it as FOMO, really. They're looking at it as just an interesting thing to watch, especially because we share a lot of behind the scenes of how it all comes together—us rolling up our sleeves. By doing that, it gives a sense of humanity.”
That content also helps build brand awareness, Silberman said. When introducing herself to investors, fellow founders, or others unfamiliar with her and the brand, pointing to the Nantucket trip can quickly communicate what Hotel Lobby Candle is about.
The problem, then, isn’t necessarily that brands market to creators. It’s when an experience exists solely for the content it generates, rather than offering something meaningful to attendees and lasting value for the brand itself.
For Vanessa Gordon, a Hamptons-based event planner and producer, and founder of East End Taste, a more sustainable creator economy in these places means including both consumers and influencers, if at different times, so everyone gets a piece of the pie. She points to a model where influencers come first, post on a tight turnaround, and consumers are invited the next day to experience a similar version of the event.
That’s increasingly the model brands are adopting: not necessarily making an exclusive experience completely accessible, but creating different points of entry into the same brand world.
“This gives an opportunity to create beautiful content and coverage,” Gordon told BeautyMatter. “It gives influencers the floor to use the product or experience the brand with the space to create content, and the next day, consumers have the opportunity to see for themselves what the creators came up with.”
While one-off activations created solely for influencers aren’t going anywhere, experts point towards experiences designed to encourage greater longevity: longer creator relationships, extended brand presence, and experiences that connect to the communities already there.
Mytheresa, an online luxury fashion and designer goods retailer, brought a customized mobile boutique to the Hamptons, traveling between beaches, hotels, wineries, restaurants and cultural destinations; offering private shopping appointments to top clients, with Thursdays open to the public. Kith Women, the womenswear and activewear brand, and Vivrelle, a subscription-based luxury rental handbag and accessories company, opened a summer-long Bridgehampton pop-up, combining retail, hospitality and a laundry list of activations. Pickle, another clothing rental company, meanwhile, opened what it called the Hamptons’ first real-life shared closet, stocked with pieces from creators and community members.
Other brands partnered with local businesses: Elemis, had a Floating Wellness Cabana at the Montauk Yacht Club, and Armani Beauty hosted a “Dolci Blush” pop-up at The Surf Lodge, a multi-day, consumer-facing experience that provided blush shade matching, interactive photo ops, and product gifting.
Brand trips and consumer activations don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Hotel Lobby Candle’s Nantucket trip coincided with the brand’s consumer pop-up at The Nantucket Hotel offering complimentary candle painting and other free activities.
“Were always thinking of ways to involve consumers in the process and want them to get to do cool things that they aren't getting to do if they're not creators,” Silberman said. It's all about building genuine connections, rather than focusing on the transactions for her.
Hotel Lobby Candle also brings consumers and creators into the brand’s creative process. During the trip, Silberman shared unfinished fragrance samples and invited guests to vote on and discuss what they liked and didn’t like. She showed the samples to consumers, too, giving them a chance to contribute their opinions.
As brands look toward summer 2027, the challenge will be to create experiences that give guests a meaningful role beyond simply attending or watching. The question will be what creators, and those who watch them, are actually being invited to participate in, and how consumers can engage, whether that’s in real life or through their screens.
Gonzalez predicts that experiences will become more tactile and less manufactured—think people actually cooking instead of simply being served a beautiful meal. The experiences can still be beautiful, she says, but they may become more participatory and co-created.
“With these smaller, high-profile events, you have to think about the halo effect they create and how that experience can filter down to a wider audience—so people feel appreciated and have access, not just when the products hit the shelves.”
Gonzalez sees this participation as one of the defining shifts that could create more sustainable brand activations in these vacation destinations. The result is an experience that feels less like an interchangeable event that happens to take place in the Hamptons, and more connected to the place itself.
She and Gordon both pointed to a fact many brands overlook: the Hamptons exist all year round, outside of its assumed seasonal constraints.
These locations have a growing year-round population, and the local community itself can offer brands an influential “tight-knit” group, according to Gonzalez. From Montauk Fall Fest to the Hamptons Festival in the fall months, there are “some serious folks out there who definitely have the capital, who want to go out, who want to have fun and want to experience these brands and opportunities,” said Gordon, referring to wealthy locals who stay in the Hamptons year round and can generate return on investment for brands without needing influencers there. “These people really turn the wheel in their own right.”
For brands, spreading activations beyond the most saturated weeks could provide another way to make the creator economy more sustainable, both by reducing the competition for attention and by engaging people who actually live in the community. It could also mean treating these destinations less like seasonal content sites and more like actual communities.
The same principle of being intentional extends to where brands choose to activate in the first place. Brands might consider trips and activations in less familiar, more niche destinations that are just as beautiful but carry a different kind of meaning. Silberman says choosing such a place can say something about a brand—and about the creators, and ultimately consumers, who care about destinations that haven’t been overexposed in the cultural conversation.
Whether the setting is a destination or something else, Silberman says intentionality is what matters. “There has to be a reason” for everything.
As Gonzalez puts it, a successful, meaningful experience might leave a guest feeling energized, excited by a new product they can incorporate into their everyday life, or meeting someone they would not otherwise have met.
The challenge for brands next summer—and eventually in every popular destination, including Jackson Hole and Aspen in the upcoming fall months—may not be to make these places less of a stage. It may be to give people a reason to step off it and actually participate.
