Motivations for sharing tourism experiences through social media

• Altruistic and community-related motivations are most relevant for information sharing.
• Motivational factors differ depending on type of content and type of social media.
• Social networks allowing audience control are most popular for online sharing.
• Tourists prefer sharing visual content above narrative/textual content.
• There is low ‘real-time’ use of social media for holiday content sharing.

Social media are increasingly relevant as part of tourism practices affecting destinations and businesses. Based on a destination-specific survey, this study charts and explores summer holidaymakers' motivations for social media contributions and their willingness to share content through various social media. The findings in relation to the much-visited destination of Mallorca offer an understanding of the adoption of tourist social media in technologically-advanced markets with high levels of ICT use. The results provide insights into such motivational factors as personal and community-related benefits as well as the social capital that influences a sharing of user-generated content. The study reveals a dominance of visual content, along with the relevance of altruistic and community-related motivations and motivational differences between types of content creators. Sharing practices through social media appear as valuable articulations of sociability and emotional support, while having lesser relevance as information sources for holiday decision-making. The paper additionally shows the extent to which old and new technologies overlap and complement each other.