Social Media Trends 2025: Actionable Insights for Tourism

The digital landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and staying ahead in social media requires agility and strategy. The best-performing brands are not merely chasing trends but integrating social listening, AI-driven content, and innovative engagement techniques into their strategies. Here’s what tourism operators need to know to harness these trends for success in 2025.

1. The Shift Towards Entertainment-Driven Content

Consumers now expect brands to entertain, educate, and inform without overt self-promotion. In response, businesses are prioritising content that engages audiences authentically. Nearly half of surveyed marketers in the Hootsuite 2025 social media survey state that over 60% of their content serves this purpose.

Some brands are even experimenting with different tones and personalities across platforms, moving away from rigid brand consistency to embrace a more dynamic and platform-specific approach. This creative flexibility allows tourism operators to engage audiences more effectively across various channels.

Action Points:

• Assess your current content strategy and identify areas where entertainment-driven content can be integrated.
• Experiment with new formats and tones to see what resonates best with your audience.
• Use platform-specific strategies rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

2. Outbound Engagement: Tapping Into Creator Communities

Brands are increasingly engaging in conversations by commenting on posts from creators with loyal followings. This form of outbound engagement helps brands gain visibility and foster relationships within niche communities.

Research indicates that timely and relevant comments, particularly on posts from micro-influencers, generate the highest engagement. Strategic outbound commenting can position tourism businesses in front of potential customers in an organic way.

As Tomahawk Digital Performance Specialist Jaimee Beck points out, engaging with influencer posts creates added benefits:

"With so much focus placed on creating content, keeping up with trends and meeting growth goals, it's easy for businesses to overlook the 'social' opportunities of social media. Strategically commenting on the content of relevant micro-influencers allows you to spark relationships with your audience in a more time-efficient manner than engaging with individual audience members."

Action Points:

• Identify key creators in the travel and tourism space whose audiences align with your brand.
• Develop a strategy for engaging in comment sections, ensuring that contributions add value and align with your brand’s tone.
• Monitor the response to your comments and refine your approach based on engagement data.

3. The Power of Social Listening for Performance Marketing

Social listening is no longer just a tool for monitoring brand mentions, it’s now a key driver of business insights and performance marketing. By analysing online conversations, brands can identify customer needs, spot market gaps, and track sentiment in real time.

For tourism businesses, this means understanding what travellers are saying about destinations, accommodation, and experiences, then using those insights to refine marketing strategies and service offerings.

"Social listening takes any guesswork out of research, giving you instant insights into what travellers are saying and what they want. Instead of spending hours trawling socials, these tools can quickly spot opportunities, allowing you to tweak your marketing strategy in real time to accommodate trends."  - Georgia MacMillan, Tomahawk Digital Performance Specialist

Action Points:

• Invest in a social listening tool to track customer sentiment and industry trends. See these top 10 social listening tools for 2025!
• Use social insights to inform your content strategy, advertising, and customer service approach.
• Measure the impact of your social media efforts by linking engagement data to key business outcomes.

4. The Micro-Virality Trend: Precision Over Mass Appeal

While large-scale virality is becoming harder to achieve, smaller, targeted virality, where content resonates deeply with a specific audience, is proving to be more effective. Brands that strategically engage with trends relevant to their audience see higher engagement rates and increased brand loyalty.

For tourism operators, this means tapping into niche interests, cultural moments, and customer-generated content to create shareable experiences.

Action Points:

• Use social listening to identify trends that align with your brand’s audience and values.
• Prioritise quality engagement over mass exposure by crafting content that sparks conversation within your target market.
• Encourage user-generated content to build authenticity and credibility.

5. AI in Content Creation: A Strategic Partner

AI is no longer a novelty in marketing, it’s a necessity. From generating ideas to refining copy and creating visuals, AI is streamlining content production at scale. In 2025, brands that fail to integrate AI into their workflows will struggle to keep up with content demands. The Hoosuite survey reported that at least 70% of social media marketers in 2024 used AI for a variety of tasks including: to edit and refine text, create text from scratch, completely revise and rewrite text, or to generate new ideas.

For tourism operators, AI can help personalise recommendations, generate high-quality content efficiently, and optimise marketing strategies.

Action Points:

• Incorporate AI tools for content ideation, writing, and image generation.
• Maintain human oversight to ensure AI-generated content aligns with brand voice and values.
• Train your team on AI best practices to enhance efficiency without compromising authenticity.

6. AI for Strategic Decision-Making

Beyond content, AI is becoming an essential tool for social media strategists, aiding in competitive analysis, campaign forecasting, and audience segmentation. Tourism businesses that leverage AI for strategic planning will be better positioned to adapt to changing consumer behaviours and market conditions.

Action Points:

• Use AI-driven analytics to optimise campaign performance and content distribution.
• Integrate AI into your customer relationship management (CRM) system for personalised marketing.
• Regularly update your strategy based on AI-generated insights to stay ahead of industry shifts.

The Future of Social Media is Dynamic!

Tourism businesses that keep informed of social media trends will be well-equipped to engage their audiences effectively and drive business growth in 2025. By focusing on entertainment-driven content, proactive engagement, social listening, AI integration, and micro-virality, you can build stronger connections with travellers and stay ahead of the competition.

It's a great time to think about refining your approach, experiment with new strategies, and turn insights into action. The future of social media in tourism is dynamic - stay agile, stay informed, and most importantly, stay connected with your audience.