Tourist Engagement in the Era of Influencers: Integrating Parasocial Interaction and Destination Preferences into a Conceptual Framework

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-676-0_19How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Tourist Engagement; Parasocial Interaction; Destination Preference; Destination Image; Social Media Influencer; Tourism Marketing

Abstract

The increasing importance of social media influences in travel promotion has transformed how destinations are visualized, trusted, and selected as part of the travel decision. Recent studies show that influence credibility, travel vlogs, which are often referred to as travel storytelling, viewer engagement, and parasocial interaction are important for selecting travel destinations, but in the recent studies literature remains fragmented. Engagement is often treated as an indicator, parasocial interaction as an independent social construct, and destination choice as a downstream outcome disengaged from border destination theory. This study addresses that gap by developing an integrated conceptual framework that links tourist engagement, parasocial interaction, destination brand image, and destination preference. Drawing attention to parasocial interaction theory, customer engagement literature, and destination theory. This paper argues that engagement with influencer content is the initiating condition that reinforces one-sided relational closeness with travel influencers; that parasocial interaction shapes the co-creation of destination brand image; and that destination image translates into digitally mediated meanings into destination preference. Inspired by a problematic approach to destination scholarship, this paper also reframes destination preference as more than an individual response to promotional messages. It is an outcome emerging from symbolic, relational, and sociocultural processes in digital markets. Seven propositions are advanced, and implications are developed for theory, destination management, influencer strategy, and future empirical research. This study contributes by shifting the discussion from narrow persuasion logic to a more understanding of how influence-led marketing shapes destination preferences.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Devvandya Mishra
AU  - Shraddha Choudhary
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - Tourist Engagement in the Era of Influencers: Integrating Parasocial Interaction and Destination Preferences into a Conceptual Framework
BT  - Proceedings of the 13th International Youth Conference in the series of “Youth for India @2047, AI Disruption and Opportunities: Preparing Youth for Global Challenges (IYC 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 304
EP  - 316
SN  - 1951-6851
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-676-0_19
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-676-0_19
ID  - Mishra2026
ER  -