Influencers in Tourism Digital Marketing: A Comprehensive Literature Review

In an increasingly competitive business world, digital marketing, competitive advantage, and the role of influencers are intertwined with each other. Digital marketing offers many benefits to companies in its application [20] and can easily find direct communication channels with consumers. Therefore, companies can collect various valuable information and reviews through social media to improve their superior products [20, 21].

Planning a promotional strategy with social media will be effective in increasing product sales [20, 22], this is due to the company's continued connection with customers [23]. This has been proven by Casaló et al., [24] in revealing why Athens as a favorite tourist destination is more due to the influence of social media [20], especially [20] also emphasized that attracting social media audiences will be more effective if balanced with the use of social media influencers.

2.1 Digital marketing

Nowadays digital marketing has become the main focus of businesses around the world. It started out as a rapidly developing mode of communication which has not only generated extra revenue but also most importantly become a way to describe and maintain sustainable relationships among various entities in the market [25]. Internet users do not only interact with each other, but more specifically they also interact with specific brands selected from certain businesses/industries [25]. Hence, digital marketing is recognized as a process to promote brands, which connects with potential consumers online; It includes not only email, social media, web-based advertisement, and also text and multimedia messaging services as channels of marketing [13].

In this regard, Kaur et al. [25] classified various criteria for digital marketing effectiveness based on their context (as indicated in Table 1).

Table 1. Criteria for digital marketing effectiveness

Source: Kaur [25]

Digital marketing is considered to be a more successful method of doing promotion compared to the traditional one. This claim is based on the fact that digital marketing has enabled business owners to track its users’ behavior in real-time manner. Moreover, the reach and scope of every campaign conducted digitally can be conveniently tracked [25]. Consequently, the need to proliferate digital marketing into the general business marketing strategies will contribute to improvements in the achievement of overall marketing and business targets by empowering the brands to gain valuable insight into consumer behaviors and how to meet them better [25].

In light of the promising advantages provided by digital marketing, the majority of business enterprises are currently trying to promote their products and services online, subsequently, the demand for digital marketing (tools and techniques) and its implementation has risen significantly over the past two years [13]. Nevertheless, there are criteria for a digital marketing campaign to be considered effective according to [25].

2.2 Competitive advantage

Conceptually, competitive advantages are initiated from various activities related to product design, processes, marketing, distribution, and market reception [26]. They are absolutely essential for any company in every sector of industry, especially to ensure the survival of the product/service [23, 24]. These cutting edges are unique selling points that are not possessed by other similar companies (competitors) in the industry [11, 16, 25]. This means that having competitive advantages based on its unique strength, which is not possessed by its competitors, is also profoundly crucial for a tourism agent/company to benefit its business performance [12].

In the dynamic market of tourism industry, a business firm’s innovation management strategy in the form of collaborative networking with other stakeholders like the government, suppliers, and society is a very important aspect in developing competitive edges for the tourism business in the long term [12]. As the development involves the government as policy maker, it should be conducted while considering the four attributes of The Diamond of National Advantages [27, 28]. The first pillar is the Factor Conditions, which include the conditions of the production/operational factors of an industry that influence its flow. The second pillar, the Demand Conditions, is the circumstance where the market’s demand for certain industry’s products/services varies according to customers’ expectations; thus, the businesses strive to innovate and focus on different (chosen) market segments [28]. The third pillar, Related and Supporting Industry, is the condition of complementary services that support the performance, innovation, and upgrading processes of the main industry in order to gain global competitiveness. The last pillar, Firm Strategy, Structure, and Rivalry, is the condition where the business firm determines its organization structure, strategies to innovate and operate/perform better, as well as its tendency to compete with other rivals in the market [28].

By focusing on its competitive advantages, a business will have a better chance to survive and a better capability to compete in the market. Since these competitive edges play a prominent role in enhancing the business performance [13]; hence, better achievements in the tourism industry also can be reached by utilizing this strategy while also affecting the supply chain activities [11, 27].

2.3 Influencer

Over the last few decades, digital marketing campaigns that endorse celebrities such as movie stars, have become a recognized strategy in improving the business’ marketing communication [19, 28]. Similarly, the presence of influencers in social media has turned them into very relevant marketing media and has continuously increased their utilization [19]. Studies have shown that using a local or national influencer can serve as a valuable inspiration for food products, restaurants, as well as tourism destinations [29]. Digital Marketing Institute data from 2019 also showed that 50% of internet users follow prominent influencers in decision-making and adhere to their recommendations, whereas 40% of the users buy promoted products after browsing Instagram pages or watching YouTube videos [19].

Moreover, Fink et al. [30] cited by Vrontis et al. [19] also provided evidence that influencers’ credibility strengthens a customer’s buying intention of a product, this effect can last for quite a long time, at least for a period of 4 years. Another study [31] also suggested at least ten companies utilize influencers in their marketing efforts with an emphasis on the communication model being implemented.

At the moment, implementing influencers’ strength in promoting business’ products is well-known to be very effective and efficient. However, in adopting this strategy their efficacy must be well assessed in order to achieve the intended targets. Their strength or influence is generally measured by using quatitative parameters such as the number of fans, followers, liked posts, comments, and various variables on their personal profiles on social media [29].

4.1 Article selection

Article selection was carried out based on research interest, which is digital marketing in tourism industry. The search was performed based on relevant keywords relevant to the chosen topic, the search result from Scopus online database discovered 232 relevant articles that were published over the period between 2018 and 2022.

Based on the above flow chart (Figure 1), guidance for the reporting of selection and literature study processes is obtained from the PRISMA tool (Figure 2). In the first stage, article selection was performed using the prepared keywords and resulted in 232 articles. In the second stage, the authors made some adjustments to the article search settings following the criteria set in IC 1, e.g., published between 2018 and 2022, the article is written in English, can be accessed in the full paper, in the form of article, and includes the set keywords (digital marketing, tourism, social media, tourism sector, and tourism marketing). This sorting resulted in 24 articles that matched with IC 1, and 208 that did not match (excluded).

In the third stage, study identification and selection were conducted through the exploration of article titles, abstracts, and article keywords. Based on IC 2 set of criteria, from the selected study of 24 articles, 5 of them were eliminated due to their failure to match the criteria, or in other words, they were not (directly) related to the topic of interest – digital marketing in the tourism sector. Finally, after performing manual table data extraction while doing a thorough review and discussion with IC 2 in mind, an ultimate selection of 19 articles was decided.

4.2 Selected article demography

In this section, the publication years of the selected articles and the origin country distribution are illustrated. In the years of the results 19 articles were not well-distributed over the period of 2018-2022, more specifically most of them were published in 2022. Notably, there were only two articles published in 2019 [39, 40]. Whereas in 2020, as few as four articles were published by [1, 41-43], to be more specific can be seen in Figure 3.

As illustrated in the chart, the selected 19 articles were distributed between 2019 and 2022, where none of the initially sorted published articles in 2018 focused on the topic of interest of this study. This might be caused by some factors, for instance: the concentrated topic of research on different subject areas or trends besides digital marketing or the tourism sector. However, in 2019 there were 2 studies with matching topics, presumably the reason for this was the effect of the rise in topics related to COVID-19. Overall, the next two years saw no significant change in the number of (directly) related studies on the topic, but the number rose significantly in 2022 when the need to meet the challenge in the advancement of technology and the post-COVID recovery faced by tourism sectors both in the developed and developing countries were well recognized by businesses around the globe (as shown in Figure 4).

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Figure 2. Flow chart based PRISMA guide

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Figure 3. Article (publication) year distribution

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Figure 4. Article publication based on country

Table 2. Selected article source

Source: prepared and compiled by the authors

Figure 4 above depicts that many of the selected articles were published in developed countries such as Russia [15, 44], Spain [41, 43], Portugal [7, 8, 40, 45], Finland [46], Italy [29], and also United Kingdom [42]. On the other hand, relevant researches on digital marketing and the tourism industry were also conducted in developing countries such as Ukraine [1, 40], Greece [6, 47], Indonesia [39], Serbia [48], Pakistan [49], and Thailand [12].

From the list of countries, Spain is the country where the most researches on this topic were carried out, with as many as three articles by Tarazona-Montoya et al. [43], Sánchez-Teba et al. [41], and Michael and Fusté-Forné [50]. Whereas in Finland [46], Indonesia [39], Serbia [48], Pakistan [49], Italia [29] and the United Kingdom [42] only one article was published in this subject area. Similarly, the distribution of articles based on the journal where they were published was also varied. As many as six articles were published in Sustainability (Switzerland), two articles in the Uncertain Supply Chain Management journal, and only a single article each was published in other journals (Table 2).

In this next section, the common variables used by the researchers in their studies from the selected articles when implementing digital marketing in the tourism industry are laid out. The authors managed to identify, classify and compare the 19 articles based on the view of digital marketing concepts [25] and most commonly used research variables as follows (Table 3).

Based on the comparison in Table 3, there are at least seven common variables being used in the studies of the implementation of digital marketing strategies in the tourism sector as proposed in the views of [25] including a common emphasis on the utilization of social media. However, not many of the selected articles discussed the role of influencers to support the digital marketing campaign particularly to promote tourism products/services, as contrasted to the roles of tourism related websites, social media, and interesting and unique content that occurred more frequently. Therefore, in the next section, this gap between the occurrence of marketing strategies involving influencers and other common keywords is visualized in the context of selected articles (Figure 5).

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Figure 5. Network visualization (mapping) of the 232 chosen articles

Table 3. Digital marketing variable

Source: Prepared and compiled by the authors

In the network visualization mapped in the above diagram, each node represents a keyword or research variable extracted from articles’ titles and abstracts. The size of the nodes indicates the word’s occurrence in the publications in relation to other keywords, taken from the content of the journal articles, titles, abstracts, and the provided keywords. The bigger the size of the node the more articles contain relevant keywords related to this particular word vice versa. In addition, the lighter the color of the node means the word occurred in more recent (over the period between 2019 – 2022) publications. In this case, the influencer keyword occurred in quite a low frequency compared to other keywords/variables, yet it was published in more recent articles. This occurrence is quite low compared to other variables in the selected articles, including those that specifically discuss the role of (individual) influencers and their followers towards someone’s rating and comment, attitude, behavior and one’s decision in the tourism sector [29].

4.3 Discussion

The importance of digital media in marketing strategies for the tourism industry has made its utilization an inevitable necessity. Almost every business activities in other sectors outside the tourism industry also utilize similar strategies, although they apply different approaches, criteria, and measurement standards. Alebaki et al. [4] for instance, found out that wine tourism destinations in Greece utilize websites and social media like Facebook and Instagram to communicate their services. Even though the intensity of social media use is very high, a careful selection of communication strategies is required to bring a significant positive impact to the destination’s performance [4], as contrasted to merely choosing popular social media to be used.

In the case of a study conducted by Vaculčíková et al. [1], it suggested the implementation of a combination of several strategies, such as interesting website contents creation, SEO, social media marketing, and using email for marketing. These strategies according to Vaculčíková et al. [1] should be complemented by the more interactive content creation that includes captivating photos and videos on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and the company’s website. In line with the importance of producing interesting content, Sánchez-Teba et al. [41] discovered that there was a notable increase in traffic of 55% (that indicates a positive surge in engagement) in the first quarter of the 2018-2019 period, this trend was caused by interesting contents and SEO implementation (Figure 6).

The findings show the importance of engaging content, SEO implementation, social media marketing, and the use of email as digital marketing strategies, suggesting that content-based approaches and search engine optimization are critical in increasing the visibility and attractiveness of tourism destinations. This indicates that businesses in the tourism industry need to focus on quality content creation and website optimization to improve their ranking in search results.

Bonjeruk Tourism Village Instagram Account and Hashtag Utilization (#)

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Utilization of F&B influencers

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Communication occurred when using influencer and hashtag (#) feature

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Source: desa wisata Bonjeruk Instagram

Figure 6. Digital marketing strategies implementation

Moreover, adopting these strategies is claimed to be relatively easy and cost effective [1]. However, the use of social media free services do not always have a significant effect on customer’s decision to buy the tourism product/service and an increase in the number of visits, instead, this strategy needs to be accompanied by posting (paid) ads on that social media platform [6], which will also enable the tourism company to easily reach the international-scale market.

Along with the rapid development of new digital technology that support digital marketing, using social media from mainstream platform developers like WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram become a common tool for travelers/tourists to do research to plan their travels to certain destinations [12]. Looking at this phenomenon, in order to improve its achievement a tourism company requires marketing communication techniques and innovation which is channeled through suitable social media channels. There are various ways to communicate effectively with potential customers, these include hashtag (#) feature on Instagram, and participations via “like” and “comment” features [39].

To illustrate the adoption of these digital marketing strategies, two Instagram accounts were chosen and analyzed, they exhibit examples of the implementation of competitive advantage initiation by Bonjeruk, a tourism village in the Central Lombok district of West Nusa Tenggara Province and a culinary business on the island who utilized influencer strategies to promote its products.

The adoption of influencer and utilization of hashtag feature: #desawisatabonjeruk provide an important connecting (communication) link between the destination operator and the users of Instagram that can help potential customers/visitors search for specific information about certain tourist destinations [39].

The results of this study can change the way businesses in the tourism industry approach digital marketing by focusing on quality content, search engine optimization, investment in social media advertising, collaboration with influencers, and integrating consumer participation. Tourism businesses need to create engaging content, optimize their social media, and consider advertising on social media platforms to reach a wider international market. Collaboration with influencers who have an engaged audience and utilizing direct interaction with consumers through social media can help build strong relationships and provide more accessible information. Thus, digital marketing approaches in the tourism industry can become more efficient and relevant in this digital age.

Based on this practice, this study attempts to propose a new digital marketing concept that combines the use of social media and influencer adoption in campaigning for a tourism destination. With these initiatives as the competitive advantages which also become the novelty of this research, it is expected that the implementation will benefit the business performance of the tourism village and other tourist destinations in general.

The results of this study provide suggestions for future research in this area by considering and exploring the use of influencers and consumer participation in the context of tourism digital marketing and identifying the most effective strategies to utilize them. In addition, future research could focus on developing a framework that integrates content-based content, SEO, social media, and email in tourism digital marketing strategies (refer to Figure 7). Further research on the influence of new technologies such as WhatsApp and YouTube in travel decision-making can also provide further insights into the role of social media in travel planning of tourists. Furthermore, this research can pave the way for more innovations in the use of social media and influencers as relevant digital marketing strategies in the tourism industry.

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Figure 7. Digital marketing strategy

Source: prepared and summarized by the authors