Engagement and Experience Co-Creation: An Analysis of Hotel Instagram Profiles in Porto

This article aims to delve deeper into tourists’ interaction with content uploaded to the Instagram social network by hotel profiles. Several research questions are stated regarding hotel characteristics, the co-creation dimension, and the type of media posted on Instagram that affect use, activity, audience, and engagement. Our work performs an engagement analysis of the Instagram profiles of 171 hotel establishments in Porto (Portugal). We examined 10,017 Instagram posts from the accounts' inception to July 2022, representing the entire dataset. Using complete and unfiltered data is crucial to perform robust and reliable analyses. Data were collected using Instaloader, an advanced Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) technique, widely validated in recent research. From the hotel's perspective, the results demonstrate carelessness in communication and little importance given to planning interaction and co-creation on social networks. In line with previous research, star-rated hotels and those with larger capacities tend to have a more active presence on Instagram. Regarding higher levels of engagement, focusing on quality over quantity in posts is recommended. Reinforcing content that includes photographs of the destination and hotel simultaneously (a holistic perspective of co-creation) seems to enhance engagement. Hotels should encourage customers to provide feedback to improve their experiences and leverage quality images to obtain higher engagement. More empirical research is needed in engagement analysis on social media. From a theoretical perspective, the study contributes to understanding the role of tourists in co-creation, reinforcing the need to foster engagement between tourists and hotels through Instagram. From a practical view, the methodology can be replicated by companies to analyze which content generates higher engagement and to develop better strategies for co-creating experiences and enhancing brand value. To our knowledge, this is the first work applying engagement analysis to hotel Instagram profiles in relation to post characteristics and co-creation.