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This book provides an overview of state-of-the-art research in tourism management, by including 12 chapters from a diverse group of international academics. More specifically, the volume displays three key distinctive features. First, it recognizes the relevance of tourism as a major economic driver, especially during periods of economic crisis. Second, it contributes to the advancement of managerial knowledge and practice in the fast-growing tourism sector, by addressing a wide range of research questions with a specific focus on the role of performance and strategies at the destination and company level, and sustainability. Third and last, the volume is the outcome of the collective intellectual efforts of a number of international scholars, with dissimilar geographical roots and backgrounds. They cultivate original research on tourism management from a variety of theoretical perspectives, by adopting different epistemological paradigms and research methodologies or techniques, and multiple methods (theory building, experimental, and inductive case-based inquiries)

This work explores how Italian regional Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) strategically employ Facebook to promote and market their destinations, and improves on the current metrics for capturing user engagement. Based on big data analysis from the regional DMOs' Facebook pages, supplemented with semi-structured interviews conducted with DMO managers, the study sheds light on the factors contributing to superior level of social activity. The findings indicate that the way Facebook is tactically and strategically employed varies significantly across Italian regional DMOs. Visual content (namely photos) and moderately long posts have a statistically-significant positive impact on DMOs' Facebook engagement, whereas high post frequency, and early daily timing (in the morning) of posts have a negative impact on engagement. Last but not least, the study shows that most of the regional DMOs (except for Trentino, Tuscany, and Sicily) deploy Facebook with a top-down approach, allowing for little spontaneous user generated content (UGC).