The Growing Role of Social Media in City Tourism

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the characteristics of city tourists and city tourism offerings that influence and are influenced by social media use to illustrate the growing role of social media in driving city tourism demand and city tourist behaviours. It emphasises the complex relationship between social media and city tourism to inform the future of city tourism development. The extent to which city tourism experiences are mediated through social media therefore increases exponentially in the course of the smartification of urban spaces. For contemporary city tourists, the whole city becomes a touristic playground and all urban spaces are canvasses on which city tourism experiences can unfold and be captured for social media sharing purposes. Thus, the role of social media in city tourism is multi-faceted and complex and their impacts are not always positive. From a research perspective, social media use in urban contexts offers a rich field of investigation that has so far been neglected.