Analysis of the Presence of the Term 'Sustainability' in The Social Media Branding of 8 Spanish Coastal Destinations

Identifier:  TFM:1095

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFM1095

Authors:  Rodríguez Barrios, Suleidys María

Abstract:
Sustainability is a concept that has been adopted by many destinations because it encompasses how natural systems work do to remain in balance now and in the future. Brands promote themselves as sustainable because they will connect with consumers and will increase their brand loyalty, reputation, and differentiation. Brand awareness linked to sustainability is cited as the top priority for marketers nowadays, and social media channels are a one-to-many solution for getting the word out about sustainable practices, sustainable brands. This Project is intended to analyze how destination have integrated this method of branding through social media when it comes to sustainability positioning. The objective of this research is to analyze the degree of integration of sustainability in the social network of municipalities in the Spanish coast. The sample analyzed is a set of 8 destinations in Spain and their corresponding opinion status in tweets. The procedure used to get the tweets was using the scrape tool from the scweet library. There were collected 22,044 tweets uploaded by the official account of destinations over a 5-year-period. To achieve the research objectives, a qualitative analysis of tweets included a set of 22 variables related to “sustainability”. Then, an analysis is made of the approach adopted by the municipalities to address this term in their tweets and its sustainability policies and plans that have been developed over the past 5 years. As results Even though sustainability in branding is a tool to strengthen the image of a destination based on trust, only 25% of the content of all tweets is aimed at sustainability. Within the 8 municipalities analyzed, Gandía is the municipality that performs best, with 61% of its content dedicated to sustainability issues.