Abstract

When imagining a contemporary city tourist, it is almost impossible not to envision someone who uses a smartphone to look up positively rated restaurants, find attractions recommended by their favourite social media influencer, look up opening hours on an establishment’s social media page, communicate with their Airbnb host over a social media messaging app, and snap a selfie or livestream a video in front of the city’s most iconic views to share with others that they were indeed there at that moment. This intricate relationship between social media use and tourism consumption seems to be especially prominent in the case of city tourism, which requires more decisions, more navigation and more coordination, but also offers a much more diversified and fast-paced experience than tourism outside of urban areas, e.g. in the case of beach vacations (Ashworth & Page, 2011).