Interactive engagement through travel and tourism social media groups : a social facilitation theory perspective

Abstract

This research investigates perceptions about online content attractiveness, interactive engagement and real time conversation capabilities through travel and tourism social media groups. The study hypothesizes that these factors affect the social media subscribers’ attitudes toward the destinations’ social media groups, their intentions to revisit them, and could even influence their social facilitation behaviors. The data was gathered from 923 Facebook (Meta) subscribers who were members of travel and tourism groups. A partial least squares (PLS) approach was used to reveal the validity and reliability of the chosen constructs. The findings suggest that Facebook subscribers were drawn to those groups that featured aesthetically pleasing content and to the ones that facilitated their engagement. This contribution implies that today's marketers ought to embrace digital transformation processes that are disrupting social network services (SNSs). Content curators are expected to continuously present appealing content in their social media posts, to interact with their followers in a timely manner, and to encourage positive social facilitation behaviors through online and offline channels.