Isle of Man influencer spending: £173k tourism push under scrutiny

What happened

A Freedom of Information request has shown that the Isle of Man Government spent £173,000 over five years on bringing social media influencers to the island. The disclosure has started a public argument about whether that money was well spent.13 The spending went through Visit Isle of Man, the island's tourism agency. It says influencers can reach people that traditional campaigns miss.13 According to the agency, about £35,000 of the total went on hosting influencers, and that money was spent with local tourism businesses that helped produce the content.13

The Isle of Man is a small place, but the story fits a wider pattern. Across the water, Westminster departments have disclosed at least £2.4m spent on influencers since July 2024.3 The Manx figure is close to what one Whitehall department, Energy Security and Net Zero, spent on its own: £176,100.3 The question is the same in both places. Can paid content creators be shown to give taxpayers value for money, or does the spending rely on trust?

The case for the island's spend

Visit Isle of Man presents influencer work as one part of a wider plan. The aim is to get visitors to stay longer and spend more, especially in the quieter months.15 Chief executive Deborah Heather explained the priority with two numbers. Cruise passengers brought the island about £2.3m in 2025, while overnight visitors brought in more than £400m.15 That gap shapes the strategy. Day-trippers from cruise ships are good for headlines, but most of the money comes from people who stay the night.

The agency's best example is Daniel Herszberg. He is an Australian travel creator who visited in 2024, says he had been to all 197 countries by the age of 30, and has more than 68,000 Instagram followers.11 He says the trip produced one of his most viral reels of the year, and that an article he wrote about the island's food scene also spread widely.11 He also says many people have messaged him to say they planned trips after seeing his posts.11 His content covered castles, Peel and Laxey, and an introduction to the Manx language through Culture Vannin.11 He was surprised the island isn't a more popular weekend break, given that it is an hour's flight from London.13

This is the agency's argument in its best form. The island is a "hidden gem" that is close to a huge market and little known, so creators with suitable audiences can help it get noticed.11 Visit Isle of Man has two more influencers booked for September, with campaigns on luxury travel, outdoor adventure and nature.15

The case for caution

The most useful criticism comes from someone who does this work himself, not from a general opponent of the practice. Frank Schuengel is a former Douglas councillor and a digital content creator. He accepts that this kind of marketing is now almost unavoidable. His main concern is whether the right measures are used to judge it.11 He also points out that plenty of island residents already promote the Isle of Man online for free.1113 He says he has talked to Locate Isle of Man and Visit Isle of Man about working with them, but has doubts about taking payment because it could affect his independence.11

That point about independence matters. Influencer marketing works because followers see the creator as an honest voice. Once money changes hands, that honesty is part of what is being bought, and some creators think payment damages it.

There is also a governance gap. Heather said the agency has no formal influencer policy and judges each creator individually, looking at audience demographics, engagement and relevance.15 Those are reasonable things to check. But without a written policy, outsiders cannot tell whether the checks are applied consistently. By comparison, Whitehall departments have worked under formal influencer guidelines since 2023. Those rules require them to look at the size and make-up of a creator's following and at any past political posts that could undermine a campaign.3

The Westminster backdrop

The Manx debate comes as influencer spending by central government is growing quickly and attracting strong criticism. Of the UK departments that gave figures, the Department for Education spent the most at £718,971. HMRC came next at £591,200, a figure that excludes agency fees. Transport spent about £302,874 and the Department for Work and Pensions £212,425.3 The figures came from answers to Conservative parliamentary questions and mainly cover Sir Keir Starmer's time as prime minister. His successor, Andy Burnham, has kept using creators.3

The trend is also accelerating. Late last year a freedom of information exercise found more than half a million pounds spent since 2024 and 215 influencers hired. The number hired rose from 89 in 2024 to 126 in 2025.16 Education's spending on influencer marketing jumped to £589,671 in 2025-26, up from £119,300 the year before.10

The arguments in Whitehall are much the same as on the island. Departments say creators reach audiences that are hard to engage through traditional channels, that creators are paid fairly, and that campaigns are checked for value for money.3 The Department for Transport makes the clearest case. It says most of its spending went on the THINK! road safety campaign, which targets men aged 17 to 24, who are four times more likely than other drivers to be killed or seriously injured on the road.2

Critics are more pointed than on the Isle of Man. The Conservatives' shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood called it a weak attempt to cover up failures.3 The TaxPayers' Alliance said much of it looks like taxpayer-funded PR.2 Pepe Di'Iasio of the Association of School and College Leaders said that whatever extra reach influencers bring, the engagement is fleeting at best.10 The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero's creator spending has been attacked as promoting a political agenda rather than giving neutral public information.8 Labour responded that it was simply telling people how to save money.19

Where the reporting diverges

One theme runs through all of this coverage: the figures are hard to compare. HMRC's total leaves out agency fees.3 The Department for Education says its numbers include fees, production costs and, in some cases, paid-media costs.10 The department's own numbers have also changed. It told one outlet it spent £80,950 in 2024-25, then gave Parliament a higher figure of £119,300.10 The Home Office and Foreign Office said they do not record influencer payments centrally, so the £2.4m total is a minimum, not a full count.3

The Isle of Man figure has a similar problem. It covers five years, and the agency's own breakdown puts only about £35,000 down to hosting.13 Without a full itemised list it is unclear how much of the £173,000 was creator fees and how much was travel, accommodation and production spent with local businesses.

The experts quoted also disagree on scale. Professor Andrew Chadwick of Loughborough University said he was surprised at how little departments had spent. He sees creators as a trusted source as younger audiences turn away from traditional media.3 He also warned that the government cannot control what appears next to its posts, and that backlash in the comments can undermine a campaign.3 Sam Fisk of PR firm Tangerine said the government should not be mocked for using creators. He added that the hard part is producing content good enough to make a Gen Z viewer stop scrolling.16

Disclosure: the unasked question

The coverage has mostly ignored one regulatory risk. Advertising Standards Authority monitoring has found that 43% of UK influencer content does not meet disclosure rules, and 34% has no disclosure at all. Responsibility for compliance falls on the paying party and any agency involved, not only on the creator.19 Whether the energy department's paid posts were labelled correctly has not been reported.19 When the government is the advertiser, clear "#ad" labelling is about more than legal compliance. It is the minimum level of openness taxpayers should expect.

The verdict

Taken on its own, the Isle of Man's spending looks modest. Spread over five years, £173,000 works out at about £35,000 a year.13 That is small next to an overnight-visitor economy worth more than £400m.15 If only a small share of the creators' audiences booked a weekend on the island, the return could easily be greater than the cost. That is a judgement about scale, though, not a finding.

The weakness is not the size of the spend but the lack of evidence. Herszberg's account of viral reels and messages from new visitors is real, but it is anecdotal.11 Schuengel's call for the right metrics is the key point.11 Neither Visit Isle of Man nor the Whitehall departments have published booking, click-through or conversion data that would let the public test their value-for-money claims. Spending without a formal policy makes things worse.15

Paying creators is a reasonable choice for a destination trying to reach people who don't watch TV ads. On current evidence the £173,000 may well be good value, but nobody outside the agency can prove it. Without published results, governments will keep asking taxpayers to take the value of influencer spending on trust.