Image-focused social media for a market analysis of tourism consumption

The power of social media today to promote a tourist destination is undeniable. Within these social media, and given the importance of audiovisual language for today's society, those that focus on disseminating images have been extensively developed. Their applicability in mobile devices has contributed to this development. These image-focused social media (Flickr and Instagram mainly) are analysed in this article, as reliable sources to perform a market study of tourism consumption. To this end, and taking the city of Zaragoza (Spain) as a case study using geoposition indicators and hashtags, examples are given on how these social media can provide us with quantitative and qualitative information about tourists that use these applications, and which tourist resources in the city they are most interested in.