Coastal and marine topics and destinations during the COVID-19 pandemic in Twitter's tourism hashtags

Abstract

Coastal and marine tourism offer various topics discussed within social media communication during a pandemic. The present study analysed the discussion topics in the popular Twitter's tourism hashtags during the COVID-19 crisis related to coastal and marine tourism. The objectives were to (i) determine the discussion topics, (ii) identify the discussion topics of greater hierarchy, and (iii) determine the tourist destinations discussed. The data were collected from Twitter between March and April 2020. A total of 269,722 tweets were extracted in different languages and globally through the Twitter API of popular tourism hashtags about the COVID-19 pandemic using big data software. The word associations technique was used to process the Twitter data. The discussion topics were ‘travel’, ‘beach’, ‘cruise’, ‘sea’, ‘ocean’, ‘nature’, ‘sun’, ‘coast’, and others. The discussion topics of greatest hierarchy were ‘travel’, ‘beach’, ‘sea’, and ‘cruise’. These topics refer to the motivational dimensions‘ ‘escape’, and ‘sun and beach’. The geographic locations discussed were Spain, Canary, Hawaii, Australia, Caribbean, Bermuda, Florida, California, and others. The findings will contribute to the relationship of the topics with the tourist motivational dimensions, and the destinations discussed about marine and coastal tourism in the time of crisis in the COVID-2019 Pandemic in Twitter's tourism hashtags, and companies will also be able to improve their communication strategies and develop post-pandemic products.