Social Media Usage Among Top European DMOs

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate social media usage by DMOs at Europe’s largest and most mature destinations (France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom). A systematic random sample of 752 social media postings by DMOs on four popular social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube) in 2015 were content analyzed. Results indicate that social media is of interest to top European DMOs. The study also revealed that Facebook is the most interactive social media platform and creates much higher levels of user engagement than Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. The study concludes that DMOs extensively utilize social media as a marketing tool, rather than as a customer service tool to mitigate potential customer service problems. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.