Power of Social Media Storytelling in the Development of Qeshm Tourism Destination

After introducing tourism destinations in social media, tourists' power in describing, commenting, changing, and distorting the destination-related narratives by considering their personal experiences and opinions was increasing, results in creatinga large challenge for tourism marketing organization asthe way oftelling their intended stories in social media for developing a tourism destination. Accordingly, the present study aimed to recognize the dimensions related to the storytelling power of online social media in developing a tourism destination by focusing the mentioned challenge. The study was conducted through qualitative approach among all the stories related to Qeshm tourism destination and told in online social media. In addition, 108 stories were selected through judgmental sampling and analyzed by searching in tourism websites and weblogs by using a three-stage open, axial, and selective coding in the form of thematic network. Based on the results, nine organizing and 44 basic themes were identified as comprehensive ones regarding the power of tourism storytelling of Qeshm. Further, utilizing storytelling capabilities and its dimensions in social media allows users to explain their identities, activities, experiences, and ideas, create social role, improve their situation, expand their discourses, and affect destination narratives by attracting audiences. The use of qualitative storytelling method is one of the strengths of the present study, because it has not been used in any similar domestic research to analyze the narratives of a tourist destination.