In Venice, deTourist went from 25 interactions to 421, and from no comments at all to 39

What is there to post about a city everybody has already seen?

This guide had 43 tours already listed and priced, from the mosaic floor on Murano to the bell tower and the Lido, and no hour in the week to turn any of them into posts.

deTourist guides in Venice, a city where the crowds all stand in the same three places and the operator's whole proposition is the rest of it: the twelfth-century mosaic floor in Murano's basilica, the view down the Giudecca Canal from the San Giorgio Maggiore bell tower, a bike on the Lido seafront. 43 tours, all 43 bookable, every one already photographed and priced on the operator's booking platform.

We were asked to keep the account going without asking the guide for anything new. No shoot, no brief, no extra hour in a week that did not have one. The operator's only job was to approve, or not.

No advertising ran on either side of this comparison. Instagram's own account insights report zero ad reach in both windows, so nothing here was bought and nothing needed separating out. The rise landed exactly where the posts sit: interactions on the feed surface went from 2 to 359, and carousel reach from 50 to 559.

The two windows are equal by construction, 68 days each. 68 rather than 90 because that is the whole time this operator has been live, and stretching the before window without stretching the after would flatter the result.

What did Leanboat Studio do?

Leanboat Studio built 34 Instagram posts from deTourist’s own tours and photographs and published them on deTourist’s own account, across 68 days.

1. Read the catalogue. 43 tours from the operator's booking platform, all 43 bookable, photographs included. We asked the guide for nothing new.
2. Composed one post per tour. 23 single images, 7 carousels and 4 stories. No video, no reels.
3. Sent every post for approval. Approval was the operator's only job, and nothing went out without it.
4. Published on the operator's own account, each post carrying one keyword.
5. Answered the keyword by direct message. A follower who comments the keyword gets the booking link back, so a comment on this account is a request for the link rather than applause.

Four of the 34 posts, the most recent the operator published. Nobody picked these four as favourites.

How was this measured?

Leanboat Studio measures account-level reach across two equal windows, the days before an operator's first post and the same number of days after it, using Instagram's own account insights.

68 days rather than 90, because that is the whole time this operator has been live. Stretching the before window without stretching the after would flatter the result. Both move together.

Account-levelcovers the operator’s entire Instagram account, not only the posts we built. That is the harder number to move and the honest one to report, because the question you would ask is what happened to your account, not how somebody’s posts performed.

It also means other things the operator does land in the same figures: their own reels, a promotion, a busy season, money they choose to put behind the account. We do not strip those out, because an account is a mix and the mix is the point. A daily rhythm underneath it is what makes the rest worth doing, and the question each page answers is whether the account as a whole got better.

What were the results?

On this account, interactions went from 25 to 421, and comments went from none at all to 39.

Every figure above comes from Instagram account insights for the two windows named. Post counts and formats come from Leanboat Studio’s publishing record.

What changed on the account

What this does not show

• No advertising ran in either window. Instagram reports zero ad reach on both sides, so nothing here was bought and nothing needed separating out, which also means this operator says nothing either way about what happens when money goes behind an account.
• 866 people reached is fewer than the 1,314 who follow this account. What the after window shows is an audience the operator already had starting to see the posts again, rather than a new audience found.
• The absolutes are small. 421 interactions and 39 comments across 34 posts is a real rise from 25 and 0, and it is not a large account's numbers.
• Our 29 measurable posts summed 3,291 reach against the account's 866. Summed per-post reach counts the same person once per post, so it is a check that nothing outside our posts carried the window rather than a reach figure of its own.
• 68 days is a short read. The posts and the rise happen together, which is correlation and not proof that one caused the other.
• Nothing here is a booking. Instagram does not report what happens after a link.

Is this typical, or is it the best case?

Leanboat Studio does not publish a cohort comparison yet, so this page cannot tell you where deTourist sits against every other operator.

There was one here, and it came down. It was assembled from a sweep across every partner at once, and a sweep is exactly the thing that hides a bad figure inside an average. Every partner is now being read end to end on its own page, and a median goes back up only once that is true of all of them.

Until then, read this as one operator’s result. It is not an average and it is not a promise about your account.

Measured by Ygor Fonseca, Founder and Systems Lead at Leanboat. 14 September 2026.