Is nothing like before? COVID-19–evoked changes to tourism destination social media communication

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has boosted the significance of social media for tourism destinations. Therefore, this study investigates how and to what extent the pandemic has changed tourism destination communication on social media and consumers' social media engagement. Using data collected from 1136 Facebook posts by 85 Austrian tourism destinations, the authors compared three different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e. pre-COVID, lockdown, post-lockdown). Results show that 1) the use of linguistic text features of social media content has changed (i.e. more expressions of uncertainty, confidence, emotionality, more first-person storytellers, greater text length, and less specificity); 2) consumers’ social media engagement, measured as likes, shares, and comments, has increased; and 3) textual features explain changes in social media engagement rates only to a limited degree. Based on these findings, the study provides recommendations for destinations on how to design effective social media content during crises. • Crises, such as COVID-19, increase engagement with destinations' social media posts. • Tourism crises affect textual social media content. • During crises destinations should refrain from emotional and specific online texts.