Visual content along the tourist journey in small destinations

Background Two main perspectives have been adopted to analyse the use of social media in the tourism (Leung et al., 2013): (1) the role and use of social media in tourists’ decision making and (2) the role of social media for promotion and destination image reinforcement. Following the visual social media trends, research with visual content analyses are increasing. Purpose This research would like to adopt an innovative approach by analyzing the photos of small destinations uploaded on Instagram in order to understand how different image content impact on the different phases of the tourist journey. The research design The research is composed by 2 studies. Study 1 is based on the analysis of Instagram images, in order to study the purchase and post-purchase phase of the tourist journey. Study 2 is based on a survey which uses representative images from study 1 to understand the pre-purchase phase of the tourist journey. Contribution This research will contribute to explain the role of visual contents shared on Instragram, providing evidence of their relevance in understanding the different phases of the tourists’ journey. Destination management organizations will obtain useful insights for better answering to tourists’ needs and preferences.