Having to choose a destination proves oftentimes much harder as it sounds. If decades ago the choices were to some extend limited either because of mobility reasons, either because of budget restrictions or simply because of lack of knowledge, nowadays arguing that someone cannot go to a destination or that s/he does not have enough information about a place is almost impossible.

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Moreover, one of the most important aspects to consider when choosing a destination are “The Reasons Why”. Regardless of the information a person can gather: weather conditions, how many 5* hotels there are, number of kilometers of sandy beach or airport proximity, people feel the need to know that these information are accurate. They are in search of word of mouth, either is coming from friends either is electronic word of mouth. With regard to the second concept, social media has become a shared marketing working space. Users are not passive participants anymore, but active co-creators. They  are involved in both destination branding via video sharing, online communities or micro-blogging (Fourniera & Avery, 2011) and decision making process by providing information about prices, availability or product features to prospective tourists (Barnes, 2015).

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A 2014 study, using netnography techniques, revealed that sharing contented about travelling was the third most common posting trend (Bertino, 2014). Supporting this study, 2013 Digital Tourism Think Tank report – ‘The European NTO digital benchmark’ stated that 93% of travellers were influenced by social media reviews during their planning process and that 80% would ask within their social media communities for recommendations (Digital Tourism Think Tank, 2013).

When analyzing destinations marketing approach, there is a clear view that the balance of power has changes in favor of user generated content (Hays, S., Page, S. J., & Buhalis, D., 2013), instead of traditional marketing strategies. In line with this major change and the implications that it brings in term of brand image (Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y., & Wiertz, C., 2013), DMOs must focus on blending into these communities and most important profit from these interactions (Hanna, R., Rohm, A., & Crittenden, V. L., 2011).

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Travellers are shaping a destination image by sharing real time information about a place, by sharing videos and pictures or by blogs. The most relevant attributes of these user generated posts are personal experience and authenticity. Not to be neglected, whenever someone is posting during or after his/her vacation or is sharing a travel story (storytelling), feelings and personal opinions are the central part. Is never about hard facts, but it is about how connecting with a professional touristic office’s  team changed his/her vacation for the better or  is how having to walk only 5 minutes until s/he reaches the cable car made his/her holiday more enjoyable.  These personal views and insights about a destination are what, at the moment, define a destination and moreover influence the booking process.

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In other words, Labrecque, Esche, Mathwick, Novak and Hofacker, stated that this social media interaction evokes a greater role via consumer power. They divided this power, with regard to the source of power into two groups, each containing 2 power sources. As it follows, they defined demand and information based power as part of individual-based power sources, while network and information-based power, as part of network-based power sources (Labrecque, L. I., Esche, J. V. D., Mathwick, C., Novak, T. P., & Hofacker, C. F., 2013).

 

Having this picture in mind, Lunda & al. proposed a framework that would help DMOs understand and take advantage of the social media power. They constructed this framework on the fundaments of four key sociological concepts: storytelling, mobilities, performances and performativities (Lunda, Niels Frederi; Cohenb, Scott A.; Scarlesb, Caroline , 2018).

 

Storytelling is the core element of this framework, while the other three, if correctly managed, have the role to amply the impact of the first mentioned concept. The second concept, mobilities, encompasses the number of people a person is virtually connected with ( his/her social media network) and is relevant in terms of accounting for how many persons can a post reach. The last two concept stand behind how and why is relevant to personalize a storytelling post.

 

None the less, the need to understand the impact of social media in the tourist sector is a topic depicted by multiple scholars, comprising numerous variations of what is analyzed: storytelling, reviews, online communities, blogs, video-shared platforms etc.  As stated in "A naive Bayes strategy for classifying customer satisfaction: A study based on online reviews of hospitality services”  online review is an emerging phenomenon (Manuel J. Sánchez-Franco, Antonio Navarro-García⁎, Francisco Javier Rondán-Cataluña, 2018).  Furthermore, the same study states that “although text reviews have been widely studied in the literature, there has been scarce research on knowledge extraction from text reviews and their influence on non-economic satisfaction."

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Bibliography

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Barnes, K. (2015). The big reveal: Budgets, staffing and the future of social media at DMOs.

Bertino, M. (2014). New Research: Topics That Get A Reaction. Retrieved from http://kloutblog.lithium.com/t5/Klout-Blog/New-Research-Topics-That-Get-A-Reaction/ba-p/578.

Digital Tourism Think Tank. (2013). The European NTO digital benchmark.

Fourniera, S., & Avery, J. (2011). The uninvited brand. Business Horizons, 193-207.

Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y., & Wiertz, C. (2013). Managing Brands in the Social Media Environment. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 242-256.

Hanna, R., Rohm, A., & Crittenden, V. L. (2011). We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem. Business Horizons, 265-273.

Hays, S., Page, S. J., & Buhalis, D. (2013). Social media as a destination marketing tool: its use by national tourism organisations. Current Issues in Tourism, 211-239.

Labrecque, L. I., Esche, J. V. D., Mathwick, C., Novak, T. P., & Hofacker, C. F. (2013). Consumer power: Evolution in the digital age. Journal of Interactive Marketing , 257-269.

Lunda, Niels Frederi; Cohenb, Scott A.; Scarlesb, Caroline . (2018). The power of social media storytelling in destination branding. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 271-280.

Manuel J. Sánchez-Franco, Antonio Navarro-García⁎, Francisco Javier Rondán-Cataluña. (2018). A naive Bayes strategy for classifying customer satisfaction: A study based on online reviews of hospitality services. Journal of Business Research.