The Contribution of Social Media on the Post-pandemic Recovery of Aviation and Tourism

After almost two years of the global pandemic, it is time to understand how the aviation and tourism sectors are recovering. The context of this post-pandemic period could result in being one of the most complex scenarios in terms of attracting customers, hence it is a huge challenge. Therefore, the authors of this paper seek to discover whether the internet can help business to return to normal, and, if so, how social media can have an influence. The aim of this paper is thus to study whether – and if so, how – airlines are using social media to engage with customers to promote tourism. The methodologies used are a content analysis of Facebook and Instagram over a period of six months together with analyses of the posts. Only airlines that engaged with these two types of social media were considered in the study. Additionally, the authors analysed the monthly traffic reports during the same period to check the eventual influence of social media. In addition, the authors made a comparison between the post results and the air traffic evolution in order to understand whether there are any relationships between them.