To close the research gap, we conducted a study to explore how marketing offices in significant urban destinations are strategically using Facebook as a tourist communication tool, in order to illustrate how the cities studied used social media, analyse what factors contribute to tourists or potential visitors participating more and to identify cases of good practice in these destinations’ use of Facebook. In short, the aim is to find out which contents generate the most reactions and interactivity among tourists.

We have decided to centre on Facebook because, as previously explained, this network currently has the highest number of users worldwide. We start from the hypothesis that destinations are using this social network more intuitively than strategically, and have limited interaction with their audiences, as it is used more for tourist information than as a place for dialogue.

2. Methodology

This study has analysed the posts of the official Facebook profiles of a sample of 16 urban destinations worldwide, published between February and April 2019, to achieve the proposed objectives. The selection of the sample coincides with the 15 destinations from the study “City Tourism Performance Research’ (UNWTO and WTCF, 2017), which features the success stories and good practices in some of the main urban tourist destinations in the world, Malaga has been added as it is the fastest-growing destination in Spain. Thus, the final sample includes Malaga, Antwerp, Berlin, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Cape Town, Hangzhou, Linz, Marrakech, Beijing, Seoul, Sapporo, Tianjin, Tokyo, and Turin.

A content analysis of these destinations’ official Facebook pages is proposed as a methodological technique. This technique is considered to be the most suitable for dealing with quantitative research on written texts, a long-standing tradition in journalistic studies since it allows us to establish reliable inferences about the context of the news (Krippendorff, 2002) and its conditions of production and reception. It is also considered to be more useful for gathering, processing, and evaluating large amounts of information (Orellana and Sánchez, 2006). It is frequently used for describing the components of media messages (Igartua, 2006).

A total of 2 217 posts have been studied through the tool Fanpage Karma (www.fanpagekarma.com) classified by their type (photograph, status, video, or link) and also according to the number of “likes” received, shares and users’ comments. Subsequently, a content analysis of the tourist attractions and emotional values of the brand (tangible heritage, landscape, agenda, climate, nature, services, leisure, institutional messages, intangible heritage, sport, business, nontourist information, and technology) most mentioned or communicated by the destinations’ marketing offices (DMO) is carried out by showing the posts that generated the most reactions.