Digital Marketing of Tourism Destinations: The case of Lisbon

Abstract

There is now a widespread recognition that the Web is the privileged place to search for and gather information in a wide variety of fields, as well as for consumers to share information about their experiences and interactions with brands, products and services. Moreover, it is increasingly important to realize that today digital communication is not completely controlled by the organization, there is a lot of content produced and shared by consumers, so their experience and involvement with the brand is crucial for the reputation and recognition of organizations on a global level. Tourism, particularly the management and promotion of tourist destinations, is no exception to this reality, so implementing an appropriate digital marketing strategy is essential for success in an increasingly global and competitive world, specially to create a strong digital brand. The aim of this work is to study the digital marketing strategies of the city of Lisbon. For that, it was analysed the social media networks Instagram and Facebook, and the official website, of Lisbon Regional Tourism Authority. Therefore, it was carried out a quantitative study to the social networks by analysing the official hashtags used through the platform Apify, and of the website using the framework proposed in the literature by Martinez-Sala et. al. In addition, it was conducted a qualitative study on 463 social media posts and to the website using the Access Monitor tool. The results shows that most of the posts using the hashtag #VisitLisbon are from Portuguese users and from companies, and that Instagram is much more used, which reveals that Portuguese companies are promoting the region, when promoting themselves, and for a younger audience. The website has a very attractive design and is coherent with social networks, but it has some weaknesses in terms of navigability and usability, as well as accessibility. In this sense, the digital marketing of the Lisbon region should be worked on so that tourists become its allies in promoting the destination.