Evaluating the Presence of Greek Tourism-Related Public Sector Entities in Online Social Networks

Abstract

Social networks have become one of the most popular tools in promoting the tourism product. This applies to National Tourism Agencies, as well as tourism-related general government bodies (GGBs) and local authorities (LAs). This study examines such organizations alongside selected chief administration officials (CAOs) that are related with the tourism sector and attempts to evaluate their presence in three social networks: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In order to do so, this article builds upon and expands on existing social networks' metrics, incorporating them into metrics of online followership. The quantitative analysis results in a ranking of best performers, from which the authors select three good performers in order to follow with a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews. By merging the quantitative results with the feedback from the interviews the authors propose a basic normative social networks management toolkit for tourism-related public entities, found to be comprised of six thematic axes.