Tattoorism and the Elusive Quest for the Ultimate Souvenir

How do you remember a trip forever? Last year there was a feature story about “the rise of tattoo tourism” and how more Millennials and Gen Zers were planning vacations around visiting famous artists around the world and coming home with the ultimate souvenir. A boutique hotel in NY opened an in-house tattoo parlor and one hotel chain even had a program where they brought celebrity tattoo artists into the hotel so you could have a more exclusive experience and get inked in style and comfort. All these earlier efforts had one thing in common … the tattoo artists were creating memorable works of art as part of the travel experience.

This week, Kimpton hotel group announced a program teaming up with Tiny Zaps (a studio specializing in tiny tattoos) where they offer a fixed range of “locally inspired” tattoos for guests to pick from and then get local artists to do them in first-come, first-served sessions. This is a brilliant idea, but sadly the range of tattoo designs they offer are obvious, uninspired and forgettable.

As someone who has engaged in “tattoorism” by getting multiple tattoos while traveling, the beautiful thing about the experience is meeting a local artist (like these guys in Bali) with a style that you like and having them customize something truly personal for you. Without that, Tiny Zaps and Kimpton just offered the tattoo equivalent of going to Venice to try the coffee and grabbing a latte at McDonald’s instead.