Social media adoption among DMOs: a systematic review of academic research

Traditionally, travel information came from a restricted range of sources such as tourist boards and travel journals. Yet nowadays tourists obtain information about a destination via alternative sources such as online reviews and travel blogs. As tourists seek more reliable and diverse information sources for decision-making on social media, destination management/marketing organisations (DMOs) tend to incorporate it as a significant part of marketing strategies by representing themselves on social networking sites such as Facebook, Tripadvisor, and Twitter.

Previous tourism research has examined DMOs’ presence on social media, though mainly focusing on tourist attitudes and behaviors rather than DMOs. This chapter addresses DMO’s managerial and communication issues when utilizing social media, due to their limited access to resources such as knowledge and technology. Through a systematic review of academic research, this chapter aims to curate existing knowledge to answer three research questions from DMO practitioners’ perspective:

What social media challenges do DMOs face?
What are the best practices for DMOs when adopting social media?
How could DMOs measure the effect of adopting social media?

Method and sample

The authors conducted a systematic “integrative review” of various relevant articles, such as conceptual, empirical and review studies, published in quality peer-reviewed tourism and hospitality research journals. The initial literature search was confined within the 84 (Q1-Q4) academic journals in English listed under the subject category of “Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management” on the Scimago Journal Rankings website. Each journal’s search criterion was set as containing both “social media” and “DMO” anywhere in an article’s main body or text. After screening out 268 articles with three progressive stages of relevance assessment from the initial pool of 319 articles in 2018 and identifying an additional 20 relevant ones in 2020, a final sample of 71 articles (N=71) was reviewed.

Discussion and recommendation

The major challenges for DMOs when adopting social media are the lack of strategy, knowledge, or resources. Many DMOs lack a clear strategy with feasible goals to achieve, which hinders effective communication to the target audience. Moreover, they have failed to sufficiently utilise social media as an interactive tool, for example, by only posting content that are easily found elsewhere or only informing users about the DMO’s news or services. Many DMOs also tend to overlook the benefits of user-generated content, which are what tourists are usually interested in and are considered more trustworthy compared to DMO-generated images. On top of these, resource constraints such as technological challenges or inadequate financial resources may pose challenges for destinations utilising social media.

The authors synthesize how DMOs should adopt social media into a hierarchy of seven levels.

Managers’ conception: This emphasises the importance of the attitude of a social media strategy’s leadership. Managers who are new to social media are recommended to seek assistance from external organisations, while those familiar with social media should monitor their efforts and investment to amplify the success of digital marketing activities.
Basic social media presence: Basic practices to maintain brand presence include providing a link to social media pages on the DMO’s website, segmenting users based on their needs and target each segment differently on social media, or creating connections with social media influencers to increase reach and impacts.
UGC analysis and utilization: DMOs should perform analysis of UCG such as online reviews or travel blogs, which are a rich source of information about travelers’ opinions of a destination that can help DMOs understand the problems customers experience and then improve services accordingly. They should also incorporate UGC into content on the destination’s social media pages.
Positive image creation and communication: DMOs should identify inconsistencies between their projected image and visitors’ perceived images to build on strengths and improve on weaknesses. When dealing with negative or inaccurate tourist perceptions, DMOs should consider tourist perspectives and utilise social media for crisis management through timely and efficient responses. Two-way communication with potential visitors is also key to user engagement on social media.
Social media content quality: Quality content with accurate and realistic information provides a positive social media experience for users, represents a transparent image of a destination, satisfies travelers’ interests, and encourages user interaction. Involving tourists in content creation for cognitive aspects of a destination, like hygiene and safety, can also enhance the affective image of a destination.
Co-creation of destination brand: Social media is interactive in its nature, allowing users and marketers to both create a brand. As users participate in the brand creation process, they would be more interested to share the content on their personal accounts, in turn growing the brand’s reputation. Different tactics such as storytelling, collaboration with local experts, or building a DMO-created forum could be utilized.
Relationship management: Besides social media’s role as a media form to spread messages in a cost-effective way, it is also a means for generating user engagement through communication and personal involvement to generate positive electronic word-of-mouth about a destination. DMOs must provide a virtual environment that goes beyond one-way marketing posts and nurtures long-term relationships by offering competitive services and creating value for users through direct communications with them.

It is important that DMOs measure users’ feedback to evaluate their service quality, tourists’ satisfaction, and overall experience. Though there are various ways for measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing activities, DMOs should analyse each platform and their different actors, typologies, and components to identify appropriate tools and KPIs that are clearly defined and can provide meaningful and comparable data.

Researcher

Dr Yulin Liu

y68.liu

More information

This research is also available on eprints.