Social Media and Destination Branding in Tourism: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall, the paper is interesting to read and informative about the main issues dealt within the literature in the field of destination branding and social media. A literature review paper that aims at a bibliometric analysis is (by definition) a limited contribution to the field, still it can be useful for other scholars if organized properly and when taking into account a large sample. In this paper however, I feel that some more work should be done in terms of organizing the sampling and the findings. I miss some final key messages and the methodology part is rather confusing (e.g. regarding the research questions). The authors need to address shortcomings that make the discussion part weak and not interesting to scholars that would like to find information about the state of art in the field.    

It is proposed to address the following points:

1. The abstract and the keywords do not fully reflect the content of the article. The five categories mentioned in the abstract are not all of the categories analysed in the article or the methodology.  

2. In the first two paragraphs a general discussion is presented on the importance of digital strategies without any link to literature. It is strongly suggested to include a stronger introductory part supported by other sources on the topic.

3. The presentation of the methodology of the survey can be improved, the reader doesn’t understand whether hypotheses have been made and met or why the authors bother to go through analyzing specific points e.g. why is an analysis of 86 papers regarding continents interesting? And why present it if not making some kind of comment?  The 7 research answers are too broad and some of them are not fully addressed, while others are not relevant. Some metrics are presented without any reflection or in a very short and not comprehensive way (e.g. the travel cycle part). For instance, it would be interesting to go into a deeper content analysis, to question methodologies (e.g. one would expect netnography to be one of the dominant methods the last years, still this is not the case, why?) and to make stronger links to the current debates in the field.  

4. The most important shortcoming is that (probably because of the use of the keywords) the search narrows down the results leading to a very limited number of papers that are analysed (86 papers cannot possibly be the only ones on the topic for the last decade). The small sample fails to include and recognize a large number of key articles that refer to destination promotion, destination identity, place branding, place marketing, etc. and social media.  For example if one looks into the literature through scopus  many articles will be found apart from the ones that have been chosen, even in the earlier years.  For instance, just browsing in my zotero database I think the following (and many more) could have been included in your sample:  

- Sevin, E. 2013, "Places going viral: Twitter usage patterns in destination marketing and place branding", Journal of Place Management and Development, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 227-239.

- Lee, M., Hong, J.H., Chung, S. & Back, K.-. 2021, "Exploring the Roles of DMO’s Social Media Efforts and Information Richness on Customer Engagement: Empirical Analysis on Facebook Event Pages", Journal of Travel Research, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 670-686.

- Pasquinelli, C., Trunfio, M., Bellini, N. & Rossi, S. 2021, "Sustainability in overtouristified cities? A social media insight into italian branding responses to covid-19 crisis", Sustainability (Switzerland), vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 1-14.

5. The metaverse discussion, beyond the hype it has created, is connected to your research. I would recommend to take this into account in the discussion.  

6. A simple search also brings back many other efforts for a literature review that a) have not been taken into account in the article b) provide a more specific methodology and some comparable findings. The authors state that “However, no review study has yet focused on these two concepts in hospitality and tourism” which I think is misleading. Just a few here:

Hanna, S., Rowley, J., and Keegan, B. (2021) Place and Destination Branding: A Review and Conceptual Mapping of the Domain. European Management Review, 18, 105– 117. https://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12433

Almeyda-Ibáñez, Marta and George, Babu P. (2017), The Evolution of Destination Branding: A Review of Branding Literature in Tourism . Journal of Tourism, Heritage & Services Marketing (JTHSM), 2017, Vol. 3. No. 1, pp. 9-17, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.401370, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3747691

Lucarelli, A. and O. P. Berg, 2011, “City branding: A state-of-the-art review of the research domain”. Journal of Place Management and Development, 4: 9– 27.

It is strongly suggested to include these articles in the research.

7. The final discussion  should be reflecting on the initial research questions e.g. which are the research gaps that the authors detected?

8. Furthermore, minor mistakes are detected in the text and a language revision is recommended.  

My feeling is that this article should be re-organised, expanding its scope and improving its methodological elements (mostly expanding the sample) in order to be re-submitted.  By proposing an revision with major changes I am suggesting to go through a major restructuring, deleting unnecessary parts and adding comments. Hope the above is clear and helpful, wishing you all the best.    

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

§  This research has enough data points to make sure the data are reliable.

§  The results seem plausible, the trends you can see support the paper's discussion and conclusions, There are sufficient data.

§  The references relevant, recent, and readily retrievable.

§  The author has a deep understanding of the paper's content.

§  The research has most interesting data.

§  Abstract highlight the important findings of the study.

§  The authors presenting findings that challenge current thinking.

§  The evidence they present strong enough to prove their case.

§  The correct references cited.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for addressing my remarks and going through the effort to improve your paper. Other than a minor revision for typos and formatting I do not have some other comments.

With kind regards,