Journal of tourism

[Issue 26]

TOURISM DESTINATIONS DEVELOPMENT TRENDS THROUGH THE SOCIAL

MEDIA CONTENT PERSPECTIVE

Ionuţ-Călin CĂZAN
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
[email protected]
Smaranda Adina COSMA
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
[email protected]

Abstract
The aim of this article is to underline the actual trends regarding tourism destinations, which are presented on
social media channels by the most important international tourism organizations. Social media is nowadays one
of the most popular way of communication due to the extremely large amount of users they have, the level of
engagement they facilitate and, as well, due to lower costs they require in order to establish a proper marketing
campaign. Moreover, being present and active on social networks can help an organization in reaching their
audience and make it easy to spread information and to create awareness about new concepts and strategies
concerning destination development. Furthermore, social networks help organizations to receive feedback and
reactions on their themes and offer them a real framework for attracting attention about what they find most
appealing. Based on content analysis of the social media data, this article want to emphasize the hottest topics
related with sustainability, tourism destinations development and destination governance, which are promoted by
the international specialized organizations.

Key words: destination development, sustainability, tourism destination, tourism destination marketing, social
media

JEL Classification: L31 , M31, Z32

and/or tourist sales. In this regard, there is no surprise

INTRODUCTION in the argument that the impact of social media on
tourism management might be less important than has
been thought (Eyefortravel, 2011).
Social media is becoming part of more and more Social media allows tourism practitioners to
users day by day, due to the facile access to technology provide customised information for the individual
and the lowest cost of the Internet. Facebook is one of tourist. There is a great opportunity to deliver to
the most popular social netwroks, with more than 2.13 travellers' customised information that addresses
billion monthly active users, from all over the world. personal needs and preferences and which could build
Social media is considered a new way of a base towards an Open Global Destination Marketing
interaction between people, and, as well, a new mean System(OGDMS) as a solution to destination
of communication. It is also challenging existing marketing challenges (Matloka & Buhalis, 2010).
customer service, marketing and promotional processes The goal of this paper is to underline the actual
throughout the tourism sector. (Zeng & Gerritsen, trends regarding tourism destinations, promoted on
2014) social media by the most important international
Fotis, Rossides, and Buhalis(2010) suggested tourism organizations.
that that the presence of social media seems to have
caused an increasing mistrust for traditional marketing
LITERATURE REVIEW
tactics, as well as diminishing the effect of traditional
mass media. Although social media is not a panacea, it
is an effective marketing channel able to be wisely used The use of Internet and other information
in integrated communications and marketing of tourism communication technologies is leading to a new era for
services (Sotiriadis & van Zyl, 2013). the global economy. Social media continues to
Social media's presence in tourism is influential, growand increasingly influencemany social and
especially on information search and share and the way economic aspects of the tourism and hospitality
tourists and tourism businesses participate in tourism. industry. Social media is fundamentally changing the
However, little research provided solid evidence to way travellers and tourists search, find, read and trust,
prove its direct contribution to product distribution as well as collaboratively produce information about
 Journal of tourism
[Issue 26]

tourism suppliers and tourism destinations. Social media, language is obviously a constraint on direct
media is also challenging existing customer service, information sharing between social media users. In an
marketing and promotional processes throughout the English-dominated world, tourists and tourism
tourism sector, and providing new ways for tourism practitioners from non-English language countries are
organisations to reengineer and implement their at a disadvantage in the use of socialmedia in either
business models and operations,such as newservices international travel planning or international marketing
development,marketing, networking and knowledge (Hsu, 2012). Multiple language platforms or websites
management (Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014). for tourism participants might be beneficial for both
Social media can be defined as ‘‘a group of supply and demand. On the other hand, current product
Internet-based applications that build on the ideological search engines fail to effectively leverage information
and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that created across diverse social media platforms. This
allow the creation and exchange of User Generated requires research on how to design and innovate in IT
Content’’ (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). User-generated or website design, to adapt data management to
Content (UGC) comprises a variety of different types evolving social media development and to share
of content (e.g. text, pictures, audio, and video) that is information across different media sources (Ghose et
published in some context, arises from a certain amount al., 2012).
of creative effort, and is created outside professional Measuring the effectiveness or success of
routines and practices (OECD 2007). organizations’ social media activities is of increasing
There has been a debate whether or not UGC importance to make sure that scarce resources are
can be trusted.While most researches confirmed its allocated in the most productive way. In fact the
trustworthiness, several studies were sceptical, successful management of any marketing
proposing caveats such as: that trusting such electronic communication instrument requires the measurement
word of mouth relies on source–receiver of meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs)—
relationships, channel variety and presentation of what you cannot measure, you cannot manage. In
contents, opportunities for information contrast to more traditional media, social media
solicitation,message retention capabilities, and content resemble living, interrelated and interactive organisms,
provider motivations for disclosure (Tham, 2013). which are out of the control of organizations (Peters et
According to their website (Who we are - al. 2013).
UNWTO, 2018), The World Tourism The tourism industry is primed to take
Organization(UNWTO) is the United Nations agency advantage of social media outlets, as the industry has
responsible for the promotion of responsible, long relied largely on destination reputation, consumer
sustainable and universally accessible tourism, being opinion, spread of information, and positive word-of-
the leading international organization in the field of mouth advertising. However, different countries and
tourism, which promotes tourism as a driver of businesses have different realities regarding the social
economic growth, inclusive development and media used for tourism management. On one hand, the
environmental sustainability and offers leadership and importance of online marketing has not been fully
support to the sector in advancing knowledge and recognised in tourism management. It is estimated that
tourism policies worldwide. only 1.55% of the total destinationmedia
The World Travel and Tourism expenditurewas spent on Internet advertising in 2008
Council(WTTC), according to Wikipedia, is a forum (Nielsen, 2009).
for the travel and tourism industry, made up of
members from the global business community and RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
works with governments to raise awareness about the
travel and tourism industry, its activity including
research on the economic and social impact of the The research focused on the mining of
industry. Facebook posts of UNWTO and WTTC. In total 2900
The social media concept is present on a large posts were centralized and analyzed within software
variety of fields, but in this situation, it is refered in the applications. Content analysis represented a successful
marketing context, through a marketing perspective. way of understanding the tourism trends promoted on
(World Travel and Tourism Council - Wikipedia, 2018) social media by the two of the most importants tourism
According to UNWTO, a tourism destination organizations. This paper is constructed on a
is a physical space with or without administrative quantitative approach, the data set being analyzed
and/or analytical boundaries in which a visitor can based on terms frequency and Jaccard coefficient. The
spend an overnight, a cluster of products and services, data was mined from Facebook using Facepager
and of activities and experiences along the tourism application, was stored in an Excel file and was
value chain and a basic unit of analysis of tourism. processed with KH Coder, being generated a co-
(WTO - Conceptual Framework, 2018) occurence network and a multidimensional
From the perspective of technology, some scaling(MDS).
issues associatedwith the innovation potential of social The co-occurence network is a common
media platforms have been raised. As for any other technique in quantitative content analysis field, this
being a very common technique for analyzing media
 Journal of tourism
[Issue 26]

messages (Danowski, J. A., 1993). KH Coder uses occurence and the top 60 strongest co-occurrences are
Jaccard coefficient to calculate strength of co- drawn as network edges.

Figure 1 –Co-occurrence network

Multidimensional scaling is a means of a dataset. (Multidimensional Scaling - Wikipedia,

visualizing the level of similarity of individual cases of 2018)
 Journal of tourism
[Issue 26]

Figure 2 –Multidimensional scaling

The limitations of this research are represented

CONCLUSION by the uniqueness of this case study regarding just two
of the major tourism organizations presented on
Facebook, but it could be extended to more
Two of the most important tourism organization and, as well, to more social networks, and
organization, UNWTO and WTTC, are present on at the same time social media sources could represent a
social media promoting sustainable development as a huge data potential.
main topic, this being aligned with their own vision
about tourism development.
 Journal of tourism
[Issue 26]

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