Twitter usage in Tourism: Literature Review

Background: Twitter is the most popular microblog platform. Individuals, companies, organizations, and even governments use Twitter on a daily bases and get vast benefits from it. Twitter also has been valuable for the tourism sector, especially in developing business strategies, planning and studying tourist decision-making processes. Objectives: Goal of the paper is to identify the trends, patterns and the research gaps of the research focusing on the Twitter usage in tourism. Methods/Approach: A bibliometric analysis was conducted in order to identify significant authors, journals, and institutions who engaged in the research-oriented towards Twitter utilization in tourism. In addition, text-mining analysis has been conducted in order to extract and identify the topics of the papers investigating the utilization of Twitter for tourism research. Results: Research of Twitter utilization in tourism has increased substantially in the last decade, with most of the research conducted in the United States and Japan. Extracted topics are focused on distinctive themes, such as network analysis, word of mouth, and destination management. Conclusions: New topics have emerged, such as the utilization of Twitter in crisis communication and terrorist attacks, as well as the integration of Twitter and other social media such as Flickr