A beauty spot in Hawaii is being overwhelmed by social media influencers who are ignoring basic safety rules in the quest for scene-stealing holiday snaps. Officials at Hoomaluhia Botanical Garden on the island of Oahu say visitors “doing it for the ’Gram’” are ignoring “no photos” and “no parking” signs in their obsession for the perfectly curated shot. They said viral photo ops are behind a doubling of visitors — from just under 250,000 in 2017 to more than 555,000 in 2022.
Joshlyn Sand, the director of Honolulu Botanical Gardens, told the SFGATE news site: “It’s still quite a problem. People will just ignore the signs. They’ll literally stage a photo, you know, right by the sign (prohibiting certain activities).
” She said Instagrammers and other influences are blocking points of entry, “and it is very congested. It’s a shared road. It’s very narrow.
There isn’t a bike lane. There isn’t a pedestrian lane, so you’re sharing it with two cars, potentially, and strollers and walkers and bikers, and so photography sessions just don’t marry into that exact area.” She said the issue has now become “enough to be a pain,” adding there have been some “close calls.
” “No one’s been injured that I know of, but it’s got sticky before for sure,” she told the outlet. To tackle the congestion, the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation is now considering charging an entrance fee to the 162-hectare, botanical gardens, which had p.
