Women travelers and social media: Charting the path to economic and entrepreneurial opportunities

An increasing number of studies have emerged to analyze the growing phenomenon of women travelers and their active participation on social media, especially dedicated to its psychological aspects. However, its economic and entrepreneurial implications have been mostly neglected. The objective of this study is to develop a two-facet theoretical framework on how lay women travelers become entrepreneurial travel influencers. A systematic literature review of 177 academic articles has been conducted and classified into 3 categories namely women-focused, gender-focused, and gender-variable. Topic modeling was applied to identify the top 5 topics from each category and concluded that previous works examining the economic and entrepreneurial prospects of women travelers from a destination marketing perspective are scarce, especially among the women-focused studies. This study is the first to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the holistic factors related to women travelers on social media, offering significant insights for destination marketing and entrepreneurial aspects within a broader economic context. • Emphasizes the lack of focus on economically empowered women in travel research. • Points out a gap in destination marketing studies related to women travelers. • Presents a framework for women as travel influencers, using destination marketing. • Identifies religion and high-risk destinations as trends in women-focused studies.