What is sustainable tourism in social media? Evidence from tweets

Abstract

Social media is an essential tool and channel for tourism industry research. It has created significant value for tourism consumption, management, and trends. However, rare scientific achievements uncover sustainable tourism on Twitter, a famous social media worldwide. Therefore, this study aims to conceptualize sustainable tourism from the social media perspective. Based on 2,201 tweets, the study uses Nvivo12.0 to encode content thematically to explore the connotations and concepts of sustainable tourism. The study identified three crucial dimensions: tourism for sustainable development, sustainable tourism management, and sustainable tourism types. Tourism for sustainable development aims to promote the positive effects of sustainable practices in the tourism industry on various areas of life, economy, society, and environment. Moreover, its content serves for the better development in the future. Sustainable tourism management focuses on industries, leaders, experts, programs, and sectors. In addition, the study categorized sustainable tourism by entity, purpose, destination, and mode to determine the type of sustainable tourism. The paper helps to inspire stakeholders in the tourism industry to understand and pay attention to the content in the post-Covid-19 era and also provides recommendations for the tourism market, the tourism sector, and tourism consumers.