Facebook as a destination marketing tool: Evidence from Italian regional Destination Management Organizations

This work explores how Italian regional Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) strategically employ Facebook to promote and market their destinations, and improves on the current metrics for capturing user engagement. Based on big data analysis from the regional DMOs' Facebook pages, supplemented with semi-structured interviews conducted with DMO managers, the study sheds light on the factors contributing to superior level of social activity. The findings indicate that the way Facebook is tactically and strategically employed varies significantly across Italian regional DMOs. Visual content (namely photos) and moderately long posts have a statistically-significant positive impact on DMOs' Facebook engagement, whereas high post frequency, and early daily timing (in the morning) of posts have a negative impact on engagement. Last but not least, the study shows that most of the regional DMOs (except for Trentino, Tuscany, and Sicily) deploy Facebook with a top-down approach, allowing for little spontaneous user generated content (UGC). •We explore how Italian regional DMOs employ Facebook, to promote their destinations.•We advance available metrics to capture Facebook users' engagement.•Visual content and the average length of posts have a positive impact on engagement.•Post frequency has a negative impact on engagement.•Trentino, Tuscany and Sicily have developed the best managerial practices.