Interactions between tourism and social networks are among the most notable phenomena of recent times, generating new approaches, in terms of both analyses of and policies for tourism promotion. Public authorities have been forced to become involved in these new realities, adapting their promotion channels to tourists' new behaviour patterns and carefully cultivating interactions with them. It is becoming ever more important to create and transmit an image capable of stimulating high levels of engagement. This article analyses the role of one of the most booming social networks, Instagram, applied to the case of Berlin, a leading tourist city. All posts generated over the course of a year on the German capital's official Instagram account were encoded, and the characteristics of those that generated the most interaction with users in the form of likes and comments were analysed. Our study reveals that posts more directly intended as advertising generate more negative results, while there are differences between the elements capable of generating more likes and more comments, respectively: likes are more general in nature, while comments are more specifically linked to the Berlin brand. These findings suggest important conclusions for the more efficient development of strategies to promote interaction with users.
Social media has become a basic source of information for visitors and its capacity to generate interest in touristic destinations gains relevance. This paper identifies elements capable of generating greater user engagement with the official accounts of four European capitals with a high number of tourists: London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid. Our findings, based on the 862 posts published by these cities on their Instagram accounts over the course of one year, show how various aspects of the content of these posts are crucial factors in generating engagement. They also reveal the potential of including in posts variables with elements of interaction between users’ contents and official accounts. Moreover, the variables that may generate the most engagement are identified, and both differences and illustrative similarities between the strategies implemented by the cities are noted. These results suggest not only interesting theoretical conclusions, but also important implications for the tourism sector.
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