Ferreira, JessicaCardim, SofiaScalabrini, Elaine C.B.Vaz, RobertoFernandes, Paula Odete.2026-03-172026-03-172025Ferreira, Jessica; Cardim, Sofia; Scalabrini, Elaine; Vaz, Roberto; Fernandes, Paula Odete (2025). Instagram’s role in driving outdoor tourism. In International Conference on Tourism, Technology and Systems, ICOTTS 2024. Springer, Singapore. 442, p. 341-352. ISBN 978-981965399-7. DOI: 10.1007/978-981-96-5400-0_29978-981965399-7http://hdl.handle.net/10198/36106The complexity of social media engagement, with multiple factors influencing this phenomenon, is increasingly present in corporate digital marketing. Some social networks allow the dynamic sharing of promotional content from businesses and tourist destinations through posting photographs, videos, and locations. Although visual quality and the use of hashtags are important strategies, contextual and emotional elements tend to have a more direct impact on user engagement. From this perspective, this study explores the suitability of activity counts extracted from a social media platform (Instagram) to know the visitor counts at selected outdoor attractions in the North Region of Portugal. Through a quantitative methodology, the analysis utilised data from posts with specific hashtags collected in 2024, totalling 5020 posts, 7433 comments, and 126,314 likes. Three hypotheses were tested: the influence of the visual content (images and videos), the themes of the posts (identified by hashtags), and the polarity of the comments on user engagement. The results showed that the visual content did not have a significant impact on the number of likes and comments. The analysis revealed no significant differences in engagement between different themes of the posts. Sentiment analysis showed significant differences in likes among positive, neutral, and negative comments, but not in the number of comments. Practical implications include the need for integrated, context-sensitive digital marketing strategies to maximise social media engagement. Future studies should explore seasonal variations, employ objective measures of content, and integrate both qualitative and quantitative methods for a deeper understanding.engconference object10.1007/978-981-96-5400-0_29