Travel selfies on social media as objectified self-presentation

While disseminating self-related information and travel selfies via social network sites, many tourists strategically adjust photographic images to manage their impressions. With a sample of Korean female tourists, this study aims to examine the underlying nature of strategic self-presentation behaviors characterized by women's personal efforts to edit and package their travel selfies posted on social media webpages. The results of this study indicate that several elements of self-objectification, including appearance surveillance and appearance dissatisfaction, are closely associated with female tourists' strategic self-presentational orientation. This study suggests different management implications to help tourism practitioners successfully distribute desired destination images using their clienteles' strategic self-presentation behaviors.     

Mapping the progress of social media research in hospitality and tourism management from 2004 to 2014

ABSTRACT

One hundred and five articles on social media in hospitality and tourism during 2004–2014 were identified from three databases and seven journals. Seven dimensions were used for analysis. Results indicated that social media research in hospitality and tourism is in its early stages with two turning points. The number of articles rose dramatically in 2010 and unexpectedly dropped in 2014. Research gaps are apparent in several industry sectors in topics beyond online reviews and in research methods, where literature reviews suffer from small numbers and few prominent researchers. Implications and future research directions are also discussed.     

Customer engagement with tourism social media brands

In tourism, customer engagement has been found to boost loyalty, trust and brand evaluations. Customer engagement is facilitated by social media, but neither of these phenomena is well-researched in tourism. This research contributes in two ways. First, we validate the Customer Engagement with Tourism Brands (CETB) 25-item scale proposed by So, King & Sparks (2014) in a social media context, and offer an alternative three-factor 11-item version of the scale. Second, we replicate their proposed structural model, and test our alternative model, to predict the behavioural intention of loyalty from engagement, and to test customer involvement as an antecedent to engagement. Ultimately, we propose a customer engagement scale and a nomological framework for customer engagement, both of which can be applied in both tourism and non-tourism contexts. Managers of tourism brands on social to better assess the nature of customer engagement with the parsimonious 11-item scale.     

Role of social media in online travel information search

Social media are playing an increasingly important role as information sources for travelers. The goal of this study is to investigate the extent to which social media appear in search engine results in the context of travel-related searches. The study employed a research design that simulates a traveler's use of a search engine for travel planning by using a set of pre-defined keywords in combination with nine U.S. tourist destination names. The analysis of the search results showed that social media constitute a substantial part of the search results, indicating that search engines likely direct travelers to social media sites. This study confirms the growing importance of social media in the online tourism domain. It also provides evidence for challenges faced by traditional providers of travel-related information. Implications for tourism marketers in terms of online marketing strategies are discussed.     

Motivations for sharing tourism experiences through social media

Social media are increasingly relevant as part of tourism practices affecting destinations and businesses. Based on a destination-specific survey, this study charts and explores summer holidaymakers' motivations for social media contributions and their willingness to share content through various social media. The findings in relation to the much-visited destination of Mallorca offer an understanding of the adoption of tourist social media in technologically-advanced markets with high levels of ICT use. The results provide insights into such motivational factors as personal and community-related benefits as well as the social capital that influences a sharing of user-generated content. The study reveals a dominance of visual content, along with the relevance of altruistic and community-related motivations and motivational differences between types of content creators. Sharing practices through social media appear as valuable articulations of sociability and emotional support, while having lesser relevance as information sources for holiday decision-making. The paper additionally shows the extent to which old and new technologies overlap and complement each other.     

Responding to the bed bug crisis in social media

The increasing trend in social media changes the landscape of crisis communication and thus, calls for innovation in hotel crisis management practices. This research examined how New York City hotels responded to recent issues surrounding the bed bug crisis on the social media site TripAdviosr. This study adopted a mixed methods research design. The quantitative findings revealed that hotels’ response behaviors were associated with organizational factors (e.g. hotel's popularity, average rating, and star rating) and the rating of online reviews. The qualitative findings indicated that hotels employed various types of strategies in the response, which were dominated by strategies of bolstering and enhancing. In conclusion, this study addressed the need for a proactive approach in hotel crisis management and provided practical implications.     

The effectiveness of managing social media on hotel performance

This paper investigates how managing online reviews affects hotel performance. An international hotel chain provided the hotel performance data and the online review data. A leading social media firm for the hospitality industry collected the online review data, which the hotel company purchased. The results indicate that overall ratings are the most salient predictor of hotel performance, followed by response to negative comments. The better the overall ratings and the higher the response rate to negative comments, the higher the hotel performance. Therefore, online reviews in social media, specifically overall rating and response to negative comments, should be managed as a critical part of hotel marketing.     

A social media analysis of the contribution of destinations to client satisfaction with hotels

To what extent do the ratings of hotels in social media depend on the hotels themselves and to what extent do they depend on the destination of the hotel? That is, if we were able to place a hotel with the same characteristics and services at two different destinations, would both have the same rating or would they differ? By using multilevel regression analysis, we have quantified the extent to which differences in client satisfaction with hotels can be attributed to the destination in which the hotels are located. We have measured this through ratings provided through social media outlets. Data downloaded from TripAdvisor from a sample of 7173 hotels were used. After controlling for specific variables, an 11.38% of the variance could be attributed to the destination. Thus, both hotels and destination management organizations (DMOs) are involved in client satisfaction and must work jointly to secure it.     

Ecotourism social media initiatives in China

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of social media by ecotourism management agencies and how this potentially changes the relationship between the ecotourist and the natural environment. It examines the meaning of ecotourism and the way that social media shapes visitor perceptions and meaning through an examination of the content of 775 Sina microblog postings from five leading ecotourism site management agencies in China. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the social media postings, a series of semi-structured interviews was also conducted with followers and management agencies. The findings provide an enhanced understanding of ecotourism marketing and its impacts on the ecotourist while also creating a framework for the use of social media to market ecotourism. The framework outlines the importance of the meanings associated with this form of communication through its promotional appeal to tourists and the outcomes for both the ecotourist and site management.     

Visitor perceptions of European Holocaust Heritage: A social media analysis

This study presents a netnographic discourse analysis of social media content generated around three high profile European Holocaust heritage sites: Ann Frank's House in Amsterdam, The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland, and the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany. It identifies four salient discourses under the headings of Holocaust heritage as social memory, reactions to Holocaust heritage, obligation and ritual, and transgressive visitor behaviour which frame the values, existential anxieties, emotions, priorities and expectations of visitors. The findings will be of interest to stakeholders involved in the planning and management of Holocaust heritage since they provide unique access to a synthesis of unmediated visitor feedback on European Holocaust heritage experiences.     

Celebrity chef adoption and implementation of social media,particularly pinterest: A diffusion of innovations approach

Pinterest research is beginning to emerge, in part due to the importance of visually stimulating photos within hospitality and tourism. Photos are popular with many chefs for marketing, with some actively using Pinterest and other social media. Some of the world’s top celebrity chefs are a growing phenomenon as influential leaders of their personal brand as well as other goods, services, and causes. This research reports on a pilot study of how celebrity chefs have adopted and implemented social media, especially Pinterest, using the Diffusion of Innovations as a theoretical framework. The study found that of the top 48 chefs, all adopted Facebook, closely followed by 47 adopting Twitter; just 17 adopted Pinterest. The chefs’ social media and Pinterest implementation varied widely. This study sheds insights about social media, particularly Pinterest, extends innovation diffusion research, and serves as a base for future research of both celebrity chefs and social media.     

The influence of social media in creating expectations. An empirical study for a tourist destination

Social media are transforming the tourism industry from its traditional pattern into an intense informational pattern. Our study aims to investigate the causes underlying the use of user-generated contents (UGC) to receive tourist information and its effect on tourists’ expectations. Our empirical work was analysed by means of a multiple indicators multiple causes model (MIMIC) and a structural equation model (SEM). The main finding showed that when users receive UGC related to tourist destinations, they will create expectations about the destination by placing their trust in the contents received. It is recommended that tourism organizations should maintain the quality level in order to allow more UGC, and then further trust in the contents of social media and expectations will occur.     

Bibliometrics of social media research: A co-citation and co-word analysis

This study combined two bibliometric analysis methods to provide a systematic and holistic review of social media-related academic literature. A total of 406 publications related to social media between 2007 and 2016 were identified from 16 business and hospitality/tourism journals. Co-citation analysis identified Word-of-Mouth as the major theoretical foundation of social media research in business, while the hospitality/tourism field presented a diverse theoretical foundation. The study then employed co-word analysis to identify the evolution of research themes over time in both fields. The comparison of social media research between the two fields highlighted four similarities, including the growth of research over time, the term “social media” gaining popularity, the new trend of social networking sites, and managerial applications as research focus. Finally, the study called for a future research agenda on social media research in the hospitality/tourism field.     

Rethinking social impacts of tourism research: A new research agenda

Understanding the social impacts of tourism on communities is extremely important for government at all levels so that action can be taken to reduce the likelihood of a community backlash against tourists and tourism development. Given that the residents of many tourism destinations are a fundamental part of the tourism ‘product’, resident attitudes and behaviour have a sizable impact on the success or otherwise of a destination. Research on the social impacts of tourism on communities is substantial and ongoing and while advances have been made in the area, the research has not addressed some of the deep seated issues faced by tourist destinations. This paper provides a critique of the social impact of tourism literature, highlighting the inadequacies in the research that has been conducted to date, which then leads to the development of a new conceptual framework. The paper traces the key developments in social impact research and argues that the predominance of quantitative methods potentially limits our ability to gain a more in-depth understanding of the impacts and how they influence both the host community and tourists. The paper finds that the quantitative focus from previous social impact research has led to a narrow understanding of the issues surrounding social impacts and proposes a new research agenda based on ‘layers’ of social impact understanding through the use of ethnography or phenomenology. The paper concludes with recommendations to progress social impact research beyond simply describing the issues towards explanations of why they occur by suggesting that social impact research examine, in greater depth, the values and intrinsic characteristics of the host residents.     

A comparative analysis of major online review platforms: Implications for social media analytics in hospitality and tourism

Online consumer reviews have been studied for various research problems in hospitality and tourism. However, existing studies using review data tend to rely on a single data source and data quality is largely anecdotal. This greatly limits the generalizability and contribution of social media analytics research. Through text analytics this study comparatively examines three major online review platforms, namely TripAdvisor, Expedia, and Yelp, in terms of information quality related to online reviews about the entire hotel population in Manhattan, New York City. The findings show that there are huge discrepancies in the representation of the hotel industry on these platforms. Particularly, online reviews vary considerably in terms of their linguistic characteristics, semantic features, sentiment, rating, usefulness as well as the relationships between these features. This study offers a basis for understanding the methodological challenges and identifies several research directions for social media analytics in hospitality and tourism.     

Use of social media across the trip experience: An application of latent transition analysis

Recent advanced technologies have enabled travelers to communicate, interact, and form relationships with destinations, businesses, and other travelers through social media. However, the nature/patterns of use of social media by travelers varies substantially between travelers and across the trip experience (e.g. pre-, during, and post-trip); consequently, travelers develop their own idiosyncratic strategies (i.e. media repertoires) for information searching, communicating, and storing memories. There are four distinct and dominant repertoires of social media use across the three stages of the trip experience. As such, the findings clearly indicate that destination marketers should target the respective groups very differently.     

Understanding the importance that consumers attach to social media sharing (ISMS): Scale development and validation

In response to the increasing ubiquity of social media platforms, improved consumer choice, and technological progress, the importance of consumer-generated content (CGC) continues to grow for organizations marketing their destinations, products, and services to tourists. Yet, despite the importance tourists place on CGC and information shared via social media, there remains a lack of academic focus in this area. To address this gap, we use a rigorous multi-step scale development procedure to create a scale centered on understanding the importance consumers attach to social media sharing (ISMS) from a tourists' perspective. Studies conducted across different contexts (Turkey and Scotland), comprising 1183 participants, were used to validate the newly developed ISMS scale. The scale indicates internal consistency and reliability, alongside construct and predictive validity. Directions for future research and the practical implications of the newly developed ISMS scale are discussed by way of conclusion.     

A social media analysis of travel preferences and attitudes,before and during Covid-19

Covid-19 created tremendous uncertainty in the tourism industry; in this study, we use social media data to explore differences in the preferences and attitudes of tourism consumers, both before and during the pandemic. We use natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze over one million Reddit posts on travel-related subreddits. We investigate the preference for city and nature-oriented tourism in selected destinations; the analysis demonstrates that nature tourism gained interest during Covid-19 in destinations with rich nature resources, whereas city tourism lost interest in destinations known for city tourism. We also classify Reddit authors into two categories: conservation and openness, according to a psychological theory of personal values, and show that this is predictive, with openness associated with positive travel sentiment and low risk awareness. This points to the potential for value-based segmentation of travel consumers based on theoretically-grounded NLP analysis of social media data.     

Social media affordances: Enabling customer engagement

Despite the acknowledged importance of social media for customer engagement, our understanding of this phenomenon is limited and new theories can help shed further light on the unique features of social media in the tourism context. Our work contributes to the literature by adopting an affordance perspective that leads us to identify three distinctive social media affordances for customer engagement in tourism: persistent engagement, customized engagement, and triggered engagement. Our work also extends prior research on customer engagement by examining the process of recognition (proprioception, exteroception and coperception) through which organizations engage customers in social media.     

Insights from images posted on social media: Examining the motivations of volunteer tourists

Extensive research has been conducted on the motivations of volunteer tourists; however, the scope has not included how motivation is expressed through the posting of images on social media. This study examines the relationship between volunteer tourists’ motivations and social media use through the identification of picture publishing behavior based on motivations. An online survey yielding 260 complete responses is used and statistical tests investigate the relationship between demographic factors, motivations and social sharing of photos. The results show that demographics have little impact; however, there is a relationship between motivation and photo sharing and between motivation and volume of photos.