Chapter 15: Social Media and Knowledge Transfer in Tourism: Five-Star Hotels in Philadelphia

An essential part of the transfer of knowledge in the tourism and hospitality industry, destination image is defined as the expression of objective knowledge, imagination, and the subjective emotions of the tourist. Social media is profoundly changing the way the tourist images and interacts with the destination environment. In turn, firms in the industry are seeking to leverage the power of social media to gain insights into tourist cognition and behavior. In this chapter, we analyze various social media to investigate knowledge transfer relating to two groups of hotels in Philadelphia, and we propose a methodology to predict future lodging demand from empirical data in line with the objectives of the t-Forum.