Social networks as a tool for managing tourist destinations

Laburpena

The main objective of this research focuses on determining the functions and application of social networks in the management of tourist destinations, with the aim of revealing the state of the art and degree of applicability. First, in order to fulfill the objectives and theoretical hypotheses, a bibliographic analysis is carried out, which leads to the elaboration of the state of the art regarding the topic on which this doctoral thesis revolves. In this sense, the state of the art of the research is elaborated from a systematic analysis of the scientific literature on smart destinations (concept, dimensions, components, management systems) and their integration with social networks. In order to respond to the second group of specific objectives and hypotheses, the methodology applied was quantitative, based on the analysis of a series of data from Spanish tourist destinations in terms of their presence and management of social networks. The quantification of these variables, for each of the 78 tourist destinations (among which were all the smart tourist destinations, hosted by the SEGITTUR project), allowed us to apply different quantitative statistical techniques, such as: a) Pearson's correlation analysis, to establish the type of interrelation between the independent variable (number of visitors) and the dependent variables, which referred to the presence and management of the destinations on the web and in social networks; and b) to determine the degree of use of social networks by the smart destinations with respect to the others, an ANOVA analysis was carried out between the variables of the most visited destinations with respect to those of the smart destinations, in order to detect possible statistically significant differences between the two groups of destinations with respect to their management of social networks. Finally, in order to fulfill the third group of objectives and specific hypotheses, and to demonstrate whether there is complementarity between the data provided by social networks and those offered by official statistics, in terms of tourism demand, a qualitative methodology is followed, since it is based on an exploratory case analysis. In this sense, the change experienced by the behaviors and feelings of tourists visiting Andalusia as a result of COVID-19 is analyzed, both with data from the Andalusia Tourism Situation Survey (ECTA, 2020) and by means of a sentiment analysis using Twitter data. For the exploratory sentiment analysis, using Twitter, the statistical program R and the library package (rtweet) were used to retrieve messages from the social network Twitter (tweets). Machine learning sentiment analysis algorithms were then applied to the resulting data. Therefore, based on the results obtained from this doctoral thesis, we believe that it is necessary for tourist destinations to have a professional specialized in the management of social networks (social media manager), as this will allow the destination to make the most of its presence in social networks. In short, it is considered that research focused on the applicability of social networks to the management processes of tourist destinations is still in its early stages of development, especially if we analyze the real applicability it is having in specific tourist destinations. This recommendation is important both when it comes to adapting to the progressive development of new technologies, as well as to the evolution of the behavior and profile of tourists, who are increasingly familiar with the use of new technologies, and demand flexible experiences adapted to their preferences, among other characteristics.