Social media as a digital brand tool to promote a tourism destination

Resumo

In the current tourist scene, places and especially destinations compete against each other in an increasingly globalised market. In order to successfully compete, destinations work on developing a strong brand identity through effective positioning and the digitalisation has caused the business ecosystem to change the way businesses compete in the marketplace as well as the way that tourism services are perceived, consumed and accessed.

There are different approaches in the literature of destination branding as is highlighted among others, in the work of Saraniemi (2011), who states that we can think about the concept of destination brand in several ways. Furthermore, it should be noted that the identity of a destination is determined by the interactions between stakeholders and consumers which also allows this author to add that “destinations should be viewed as an evolving brand process and not a fixed and completed identity” (Saraniemi, 2011, p. 253). 

The growing possession of indispensable technological devices among tourists has increased their access to e-marketing channels.  The way tourists search and purchase tourism products and services are changing. Therefore, for destinations compete in today's marketplace, they need to have the most effective digital marketing tools to provides them a significant advantage. Based on this, the following section will discuss digital marketing tools that are affecting the tourism destinations. 

This study aimed to understand how social media is used to develop a digital brand and promote a tourism destination. More specifically, we aimed to characterize how digital marketing is used by municipalities as a strategy to promote a tourism destination; and how communication digital tools such Facebook and Instagram are used in the promotion of a tourism destination.