Crafting sustainability narratives in tourism on social media

As tourism firms increasingly adopt sustainable practices, effectively communicating their sustainable transitions has become essential yet challenging. This study explores how tourism operators use narrative structures and framings to communicate their sustainable transitions and their tensions to audiences on Instagram. Employing a comparative case study approach, this research analysed 2320 Instagram posts (from 2019 to 2024) and semi-structured interviews with three tourism operators in New Zealand. Findings indicate that tourism operators use ‘Romance’ and ‘The Quest’ narratives to engage consumers in sustainability dialogues. However, firms differ significantly in how they frame tensions, ranging from explicit acknowledgement to implicit or absent representation. Instagram's interactive and multimodal nature enables viewers to ignore, endorse, or contest firms’ sustainability narratives and to surface tensions in sustainability. This active engagement challenges assumptions that tensions in sustainability are too complex for public audiences to grasp. This study advances the literature on sustainability communication in tourism by highlighting how narrative complexity and audience interaction shape how tourism firms’ sustainability narratives are crafted, offering practical insights for effectively communicating sustainable transitions on social media platforms.