Envisioning the Future

Abstract

The highly contagious nature of the novel Coronavirus locks-unlocks and economic uncertainty around the world have changed the complete landscape of the tourism sector. To attract tourists, it is necessary to revise the content strategy of Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) in the post-Covid economy. This study explores how different characteristics of DMO’s social media posts influence tourists’ online engagement. We used 876 posts from July 2021 to June 2022 on the official Facebook handle of Incredible India, through which we assessed the tourists’ ‘engagement’, using the number of likes, comments, and shares. Additionally, linguistic features-based categorization of posts was done using LIWC. The results demonstrate that message format, message appeal, motives, and time orientation of posts significantly influence the tourists’ online engagement. These findings are relevant to information dissemination and provide valuable insights for DMOs. DMOs could use this study to design their future messages to gather maximum engagement through social media posts.