“Our smartphones are everything to us; we spend a lot of time looking at people’s posts on Instagram and Twitter, of people we know and of hotels and places, so if we see something we like there, we’re likely to book it,” said Storm Keating, TV producer and wife of singer Ronan Keating.

“Images posted on Instagram give us a much more personal and current view of a place, rather than the same old pictures on a company website,” she said.

Sky News presenter Sarah-Jane Mee agreed, saying: “If you search Google for hotels in Croatia, you’ll just get the same old 10 places coming up, whereas on Instagram, I discovered a luxury eco reserve that was much more appealing.”

But all the celebrity panel – which also included F1 reporter Natalie Pinkham and author Celia Walden, who is married to Piers Morgan - said there were also pitfalls to their own use of social media.

“I never post when I am in a destination,” said Walden. “You only post something once you have left.”