The Portrayal of Social Media Marketing in the Luxury Tourism Industry: A Review of the Literature and a Preliminary Analysis

Luxurious tourist industry winds up with the thoughts of exclusivity with restricted access to a select number of socially isolated travellers. Our comprehensive literature survey focuses on understanding the approach of tourism academia in the context of luxury travel, which is constructed on the remarks from social media and the specialised areas with regards to the studies that were conducted prior to this. The ‘luxury tourism’, ‘elite travel’, ‘social media’ and ‘sustainability’ were used in different combinations to discover literature. This was done using Google Scholar, the ProQuest database, etc. The critical analysis was conducted based on the peer-reviewed publications. The following three areas were selected and reviewed: (a) social media’s importance in luxury tourism; (b) the behavioural features of luxury travellers who use various social media apps; and (c) existing literature surveys that provided the limitations of analysing data, specifically, in the context of luxury tourism. The examined papers and publications for the last 10 years, from March 2010 to March 2020, were considered to determine the themes and focus points, as well as to measure the value of social media in luxury travel. The article discusses the upcoming research issues, and the major hindrance in this is that it requires new conceptual and methodological frameworks to enhance deep understanding of the mediating effect between social media and the luxury tourist industry based on the findings of various reviews of literature.