A touristic tale of four cities on Instagram

Abstract

Social media has become a basic source of information for visitors and its capacity to generate interest in touristic destinations gains relevance. This paper identifies elements capable of generating greater user engagement with the official accounts of four European capitals with a high number of tourists: London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid. Our findings, based on the 862 posts published by these cities on their Instagram accounts over the course of one year, show how various aspects of the content of these posts are crucial factors in generating engagement. They also reveal the potential of including in posts variables with elements of interaction between users' contents and official accounts. Moreover, the variables that may generate the most engagement are identified, and both differences and illustrative similarities between the strategies implemented by the cities are noted. These results suggest not only interesting theoretical conclusions, but also important implications for the tourism sector.