Travel live streaming: an affordance perspective

This study draws on tourism literature and current examples to propose that the emergence of Travel Live Streaming (TLS) provides new affordances for live streamers, viewers, and sponsors. Despite its increasing popularity and the new opportunities for communication and marketing in tourism, TLS has received limited attention in the academic literature. The aim of this paper is to use affordances theory to understand some of the key features and benefits of TLS. It is argued that TLS affordances include temporal, spatial, interactive, and media affordances. These affordances support new opportunities and actions for travel live streamers, viewers, and sponsors. The paper proposes an affordance-based TLS framework and concludes with three propositions to guide future research directions.