Croatia: The Sudden, Confusing Hype

So United Airlines just dropped its Summer 2026 schedule, and the PR machine is working overtime to convince us they’ve reinvented international travel. The press release is a masterclass in corporate fluff, talking about "unique, trendsetting destinations" and connecting customers to places "no other U.S. airline serves."

Give me a break.

Let’s call this what it is: a desperate, high-stakes bet on the Instagram generation. United isn't pioneering new frontiers; it's chasing clicks. It's scrolling through a feed of travel influencers, looking at what backdrops are getting the most engagement, and then throwing a 767 at it. Split, Croatia? Bari, Italy? Santiago de Compostela, Spain? These aren't strategic economic hubs. They are, however, incredibly photogenic. They are pre-packaged authenticity, ready-made for a seven-second Reel set to some trending sad-girl pop song.

Patrick Quayle, a Senior VP at United, says they "pride" themselves on this stuff. Pride? Is that what we’re calling it? It looks more like a frantic attempt to stay relevant in a world where travel is no longer about the experience, but about the evidence of the experience. The proof you were there. The curated, filtered, perfectly-captioned post that screams, "My life is more interesting than yours."

The Influencer Itinerary

Let's take a closer look at Croatia, since it's getting top billing in this new "expansion." United is so proud to be the only US airline with a nonstop to Split. While their marketing team was probably storyboarding shots of yachts and Aperol spritzes, real news was happening on the ground there. Just this week, archaeologists uncovered a 1500-year-old olive oil production complex discovered in Croatia in Salona, near Split. A massive, intricate facility that tells a deep story about the region's economic and religious history. A few days later, the Pope was addressing 10,000 Croatian pilgrims in St. Peter's Square, speaking of a faith and culture that has been "handed down through the centuries."

This is the real Croatia. A place with layers, with grit, with a history so profound you can literally dig it out of the ground.

So what happens when you point a firehose of nonstop flights from Newark directly at it? You get a flood of people not looking for history, but for a hashtag. They're not there to understand the cultural significance of Diocletian's Palace; they're there to get the perfect sunrise shot in the Peristyle before the cruise ship crowds descend. This is a bad plan. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm cultural dumpster fire waiting to happen.

Does United give a damn about any of this? Offcourse not. Their job is to sell seats. And the easiest way to sell seats in 2025 is to appeal to our bottomless, narcissistic desire to perform our lives online. I once sat next to a girl on a flight to Iceland who spent 45 minutes editing a single photo of a waterfall. Not looking at her other photos, not reading a book, just tweaking the saturation on one picture to make the water look bluer than it actually was. That’s the target demographic here.

Chasing Ghosts in the Algorithm

This whole strategy feels like it was cooked up by an algorithm, not a team of human beings. It’s like United is treating global destinations like Netflix treats content categories. "Hmm, 'Gritty Southern Italian Charm' is trending. Let's greenlight a season in Bari!" "Viewers who liked 'Pilgrimage Chic' in Portugal also enjoyed... Santiago de Compostela!" It’s a soulless, data-driven approach to what should be a human endeavor.

The airline's route map is becoming less of a transportation network and more of a collection of trading cards for the terminally online. Got your Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia card from last season? Cool, now you need the Nuuk, Greenland rookie card to complete the set. They even bragged that the Nuuk flight was the "fastest selling inaugural in United Airlines history." Does that tell you there was a massive, untapped demand for travel to Greenland, or does it tell you that a certain subset of travelers is obsessed with collecting passport stamps from obscure places to win bragging rights on social media?

I have to wonder where this ends. Are they just going to keep adding flights to increasingly remote locations until they’re running a 737-MAX to a single, picturesque rock in the middle of the ocean because some TikTokker got a million views there? They’re selling the idea of adventure, but the reality is just a longer flight to a different crowded town square where everyone is taking the exact same photo...

Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one. Maybe this is just smart business. People want what they want, and right now, they want to cosplay as Anthony Bourdain for a long weekend. Who am I to judge? I'm just the guy in the back of the plane rolling his eyes so hard I risk pulling a muscle.

So We're All Just Content Creators Now?

Let's be real. This isn't about connecting cultures or expanding horizons. It's about turning the world into a giant movie set for our own personal brands. United isn't selling transportation anymore; it's selling backdrops. We're not passengers; we're unpaid marketing interns, and the price of our ticket is a tacit agreement to generate free advertising for both the airline and the destination. The whole thing is exhausting, and frankly, it's making the world feel a whole lot smaller.