Tourism Events: The SATA Rallye Azores in Facebook and Twitter

Abstract

Tourism events and sport activities have been separately widely analyzed due to the experience value offer, which can be integrated into destination marketing. However, little attention has been paid to the integration of sport as a tourism event that attracts casual sport Food Experiences: The Oldest Social Food Experiences: The Oldest Socials and serious leisure fans. Therefore, clear orientation to client digital interaction is required, acknowledging that tourism and sport fans behavior are mostly influenced by eWOM and is complex comprehending many elements and a specific social media strategy. The present work offers a first glance at social media strategies in sport tourism events, by analyzing the activity on Facebook and Twitter of fans before, during and after the SATA Rallye Azores, documenting the topic criteria used, the engagement and sophistication achieved and transposing the engagement drivers to the components of the STAR (Storytelling, Triggers, Amusement, and Reaction) model. Results show that to have a content-oriented strategy that maximizes the engagement in social media. However, for the sport event chosen the engagement level found was lower than expected and the STAR model dimensions were completely different from the other social media phenomenon, presenting truly low levels of storytelling.