Social media and Tourism: a cross-platform study of Indian DMOs

Social media is an excellent medium for sharing content to promote destinations and engage tourists. This study aimed to examine the impact of content characteristics of social media posts shared by destination marketing organisations (DMOs) on tourist engagement. An analysis of over 12,000 posts and 3.65 million tourist impressions recorded on 16 official Indian DMOs' Facebook and Twitter handles was undertaken. Tourist engagement was measured by likes, comments/tweets, and shares/retweets counts. The analysis revealed that interactive and informative posts gained maximum engagement on Facebook and Twitter, respectively. The varied effect of content richness and content elaborateness were explicated. The study contributes to the emerging literature on tourist engagement and provides practical prescriptions for DMOs to effectively design cross-platform content.