User-Generated Social Media Events in Tourism

2017 Sustainability  
Social media and mobile technologies have revolutionised communication and particular attention has been given to user-generated content (UGC) and the formation of online communities; however, little attention has been given to tourist events entirely generated by users through social media. This paper aims to define and characterise the phenomenon of tourism user-generated events (UGEs) through social media around the user's new empowered role and to assess user-generated social media events'
more » ... nline socialness. It is also our aim to provide a useful mixed-methodology analysis framework for UGEs in relation to social media and to highlight their interest for organisations. The methodological approach includes a quantitative model to store, analyse and compare events' online socialness, which is combined with qualitative, participant observation at the events. This approach is applied to the analysis of three Instagram meetups organised by a specific online community at Catalan ski resorts. The paper's results show the differential characteristic of tourism UGEs: user initiative and empowerment, full organisation and structure, great social media use and UGC production, brand dissemination, attraction capacity, strong online community bond and faithfulness. With UGEs, an event management paradigm shift occurs as organisations are no longer the main initiators and controllers of the event. Special attention has been given to user-generated content (UGC) online due to its influence on destination and business image formation [11] , tourist behaviour [12,13] and its importance for research in tourism and hospitality applications [14] . Thanks to Web 2.0 capabilities and the creation of UGC, online communities related to various topics have flourished. Online communities related to travel and tourism have also been studied in depth [15, 16] . Kunz et al. [17] found that online travel communities often lead to offline interactions and relationships influenced by individual reputation, online communication behaviour and perceived similarity among members, mediated by trust and sympathy, which may lead to offline encounters and to the creation of events. However, although the great capacity of social media to organize and publicize events has been acknowledged [18] [19] [20] , as has as its use by tourism agents, especially destination management organizations (DMOs) to publicize events [7,10], little attention has been given to user-generated events (UGEs) in tourism. These are events with travel and tourism purposes that are created, organized, held and promoted entirely by users (rather than tourism organizations or businesses) through social media, closely bound to UGC and online communities themselves. Moreover, events have mostly been evaluated in relation to their economic impact and not to other socio-cultural outcomes or to their dynamics [21] , though, in their exploration of event research, Mair et al. [22] showed that socio-cultural and community impacts were considered the most important sub-topics for future research followed by economic impacts. According to these authors, the media sub-topic (including social media) was ranked in seventeenth position. Hence, this study aims to define the concept of user-generated social media events, especially on social networks based on images, by identifying their specificities around the empowered role of users, regarding initiative and convocation management, and assessing their convening and promotional capacity through the analysis of their online socialness. Online socialness is defined as social interaction in digitally networked environments, including social media platforms [23] . In this research, events' online socialness is understood as their relationship and interaction with social media, in terms of online brand promotion, UGC production and its influence, engagement and faithfulness of users, the relation with the online community, etc. Event online socialness measures the role and integration of social media in events. Social media based on images are ideal for conducting this study due to their specificities and importance in the tourism domain. In terms of theory, this study aims to contribute to the evaluation model of Brown et al. [21] by emphasizing the need for assessment of online socialness and user centrality in events in the Internet era within larger evaluation systems. This paper also seeks to provide a quantitative framework approach to storing, analysing and comparing events in relation to social media. This framework will be complemented with qualitative participant observation at certain events to deepen the understanding of the events' online socialness and user profiles, empowerment, behaviour, motivations, faithfulness to this type of events and the online community and event management. This mixed-methodological framework will be applied to the study of different Instagram Meetups at Catalan ski resorts. Finally, this paper aims to highlight the advantages of user-generated social media events for tourist organizations as excellent marketing opportunities and pull factors at low or no cost to themselves, and suggest their differentiated denomination (UGE), parallel to that of UGC.
doi:10.3390/su9122250 fatcat:ll5rgdyinzhkzhemw66qzphraa