The return on tourism organizations’ social media investments: preliminary evidence from Belgium, France, and Switzerland

Over the past decade, the phenomenon of social media has grown at a tremendous pace. Well established social\udmedia platforms such as Facebook or YouTube now count more than 1 billion users (Facebook, 2016; YouTube,\ud2016). New social media platforms have continued to emerge and reach hundreds of millions of users within only\uda few years – as the examples of Instagram and Pinterest demonstrate (Instagram, 2016; Pinterest, 2016). The\udmassive use of social media for the creation and exchange of user-generated content, including word-of-mouth,\udoffers great potential for marketing, but can also turn into organizations’ nightmares (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010,\ud2011b)