The extent of use of basic Facebook user-generated content by the national tourism organizations in Europe

Abstract

The social networking sites or the social media have enormous number of users. Currently, Facebook is the most used social media on the Internet and is among the most popular websites in Europe and worldwide. National tourism organizations in Europe should capitalize on those facts, especially using Facebook user-generated content. Facebook offers many ways for tourism promotion using features like Pages and Groups. The purpose of this paper is to identify how many NTOs in Europe have an official presence on Facebook and to determine the extent of the use of basic Facebook user-generated content (Pages and Groups). The research results showed that about half of NTOs do not have an official presence on Facebook, almost one-third of them have Facebook Pages, and almost a fifth of them have a Group. Besides the insignificant Facebook presence, NTOs do not use all the advantages that are offered by user-generated content. All trends show that Facebook community will continue to grow. NTOs should consider using Facebook in the next couple of years, as an effective marketing strategy.