Studies in Educational Management

The tourism sector has long been associated with new technologies, and more specifically with social media. The objective of this study is to analyse the interaction between tourist satisfaction, tourist engagement, and user generated content on social media, especially on Twitter. We propose a model based on these three related variables. The context of the model is tourist related events and locations, and consists of three hypotheses which are supported by the literature. To test our model we conducted our studies in two independent tourist related settings using both surveys and an analysis of the conversations relating to the event on the Twitter platform. We determined that the strongest influence on User Generated Content comes from tourist engagement as a mediator variable. Additionally, we found that achieving engagement among tourists visiting the destination is an effective way to generate positive content in social media. The study makes a new contribution to literature - the proposed model is innovative, in particular with the introduction of engagement as a mediator variable, and the incorporation of an analysis of social media content into the model validation. This information supports decisions at all levels that in turn improve educational process performance further.