Social media as a communication and marketing tool in tourism: an analysis of online activities from international key player DMO

Abstract

The widespread use of Web 2.0 applications and the increasing number of social media applications are producing radical changes in tourism destination promotion. Destination Management Organizations (DMO) must be able to adapt and meet the challenges placed by new interaction and communication paradigms in the tourism sector. This paper describes a study done in which we analysed a set of national DMO and outlined and compared the use of social media applications in their communication activities. Shared practices and trends were identified and deconstructed according to a set of indicators and results enabled us to believe that, despite the differences in size and structure, there are some trends and shared practices worth adopting and exploring when designing social media communication strategies.