Virtual Community Based Destination Marketing with YouTube: Investigation of

Abstract

YouTube has now evolved into a powerful medium for social interaction. Utilizing YouTube for enhancing marketing endeavours is a strategy practiced by marketing professionals across several industries. This paper rationalizes on the different strategies of leveraging YouTube-based platforms for effective destination marketing by the hospitality industry (hotels) and provides insights on the critical drivers and challenges embedded within YouTube-based community interactions for destination marketing. The comments made by YouTube users have been subjected to a content analysis and the results are reported under the five broad clusters of virtual communities. More broadly, the typology of virtual communities is adapted to evaluate the YouTube platform for effective destination marketing.