José Fernández-Cavia

Online communication in Spanish destination marketing organizations: the view of practitioners

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have had a significant impact on both the travel and tourism experience and industry. In particular, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) have found ICT a powerful ally to harmonize and coordinate the activities of local stakeholders as well as to reach travellers. The aim of this research is to analyse destination brand communication strategies, especially those applied to online communication (official websites, social media and mobile applications). Data were collected from Spanish destinations – regions, provinces and cities – via an online survey addressed to destination brand and communication managers. Results show that destination brand communication is not fully standardized or professionalized yet; online tools (websites, social media and mobile applications) are used tactically and not strategically and the usefulness of social media and official websites is clearly more appreciated by DMO managers than the usefulness of mobile applications.

Activity and Influence of Destination Brands on Twitter: A Comparative Study of Nine Spanish Destinations

Tourist destinations have started using Twitter as a new platform to provide information to travellers. However, it is still unclear what the future role of this social network is and how tourist destinations will use its characteristics to improve their influence and impact on the network. This study analyses the activity of nine Spanish tourist destinations and explores their influence on Twitter considering the number of followers, retweets and mentions. We conclude that while some of these destinations are using intensively Twitter and have a considerable influence on it, other destinations have little impact and need to improve their strategies to achieve their objectives. The study is a first step to explore the keys that explain the success of the DMOs on Twitter.

@Spain Is Different: Co-branding Strategies Between Spanish National and Regional DMOs on Twitter

Mutual influences between brands can have a strong impact on their perception, in particular in DMOs. This work analyses the mutual influence of the Spanish State and Community-level Tourism Organizations accounts on Twitter. We analysed to what extent the State account Spain diffused information about the Communities accounts and vice versa, and to what extent DMOs Twitter brands co-appeared in tweets. Analysing 127,337 posts between 1st January and 30th June 2014 containing the keyword @Spain, we found that Spain unequally diffused the information about Communities, and that there was a strong correlation between the retweets of messages posted by Spain, and the co-appearance of the State and the Community-level accounts. As in previous researches (Guerrero-Sole and Fernandez-Cavia 2014), the Andalusian account was the most active and the most influential of the DMOs analysed.