Review Findings and Social Media Re

Review Findings and Social Media Research Trends in Tourism
A total of 31 social media-related articles were reviewed and classified into three research
subjects for each journal and appear in Table 1. We found that more than a half of social media
articles (54.8%) were published in Tourism Management while about 30% of articles were
published in Journal of Travel Research. While Leung et al. (2013) reported that a majority of
social media studies in hospitality and tourism were written from the suppliers’ perspectives, this
study reveals that most recent articles which were published in top tourism journals more
focused on consumers’ or travelers’ perspectives (74.2%) rather than suppliers’ perspectives
(22.6%). Perhaps this finding indicates that current tourism researchers consider the consumer or
traveler perspective more relevant for social media-related studies compared with hospitality
researchers. This finding also indicates that there is ample room for further research effort in
suppliers’ social media use and practices. More specifically, a majority of social media articles
(74.2%) dealt with consumer/traveler behavior, showing enormous growth of research on
consumer/traveler behavior in the tourism literature when compared to 36.5% reported by Leung
et al. (2013). Studies in this category mainly examined offline/online travel behavior and social
media use, attitude and behavioral intentions, commitment/loyalty/engagement, and information
search and adoption. A fifth of the reviewed studies were devoted to studying supplier’s
perspectives related to promotion and product distribution. Only one article presented how
researchers can collect and analyze social media data for tourism. This was the last category,
indicating that there is enough room for tourism researchers to pursue fundamental issues of
theories, philosophies, and research methods related to social media in tourism.