Helping Destinations to Shine on YouTube
In a media-saturated world in which consumers habitually skip ads and pay as much attention to comments as to posts, YouTube has become a challenging yet potentially very fruitful space for destination advertising. Thanks to Professor Seunghun Shin of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and co-authors, destination marketing organisations (DMOs) now have guidance for tailoring their video advertising strategies to reach a global audience of tourists on YouTube.
“YouTube has emerged as a crucial marketing channel for DMOs”, the authors begin, “with nearly half of their advertising budgets allocated to the digital channel”. As one of the world’s most visited websites in terms of search traffic, YouTube offers DMOs an invaluable and largely unparalleled opportunity to reach a global audience. To capitalise on this opportunity, however, DMOs must be ready to tailor their marketing strategies to YouTube’s unique features.
These include users’ viewing patterns, which, the researchers say, are “characterised by their active avoidance of advertisements, as they prefer to watch selected content and often skip ads”. Another important factor to consider is YouTube’s comment function. “Users frequently read and engage with comments while watching videos”, the authors note, “and these comments can influence their perceptions of the content”. To maximise the impact of their advertising efforts, DMOs must be skilled in managing and curating comments.
Surprisingly, despite YouTube’s prominence as an advertising platform, few studies have asked how to adapt existing video marketing strategies to the platform’s unique affordances and constraints. This research gap is particularly notable in the tourism context. “While some tourism studies have investigated YouTube as a marketing channel”, say the authors, “they have mainly focused on describing the content of DMOs’ YouTube advertisements or tourists’ usage of the platform”.
The authors resolved to fill these gaps, with the ultimate aim of helping destination marketers more strategically advertise their destinations online. Their study was structured around two distinctive aspects of video sharing on YouTube that may pose challenges when marketing destinations online: first, users’ tendency to avoid adverts by skipping ahead; and second, the importance of comments.
In the multimedia age, audiences have become adept at not only detecting efforts to persuade – such as adverts – but also evading them. This is particularly true on social media, where people feel more goal-oriented and thus more irritated by marketing and where adverts can be easily skipped. “How to deal with consumers’ advertising avoidance becomes an important question for marketers when they use social media platforms”, the authors point out.
A possible tool that marketers can use to circumvent viewers’ advertising avoidance online is native advertising. “Native advertising refers to a variety of techniques by which an advertisement is crafted to resemble non-advertising content”, explain the authors. For example, a brand might craft a social media post to resemble that of an individual user, or embed its logo or product within a television programme (product placement).
“In the context of destination advertising”, the authors say, “DMOs can create native advertisements by mimicking non-advertising content (e.g., mock movie trailers, parodies of music videos)”. This can also help them avoid clichéd content like celebrity endorsements and catchphrases. As audiences perceive native advertising as more engaging and trustworthy than traditional formats, the researchers hypothesised that the less DMO YouTube adverts are identifiable as advertising, the more positively the adverts – and the destinations shown – will be received by tourists.
The authors’ second area of interest was YouTube’s comment function. “A comment is often perceived as part of the post”, the authors tell us, “and thus it can influence users’ perceptions”. Indeed, the ratio of positive to negative comments on a video can significantly affect that video’s popularity. However, the impact of comment management on advertising effectiveness had never previously been addressed in the context of tourism.
“To address this research gap”, say the authors, “we attempted to confirm the importance of comment management by examining the effects of supportive comments left on DMOs’ YouTube advertisements on tourists’ perceptions”. Combining their two areas of focus, they hypothesised that native advertising is significantly more effective when comments describe the advert as non-advertising content. Again, they expected this effect to go even further than the advert itself, making tourists more willing to visit the destination advertised.
To test their hypotheses, the researchers conducted two experimental studies. Study 1 explored how recognising an advert as such influences tourists’ perceptions. In Study 2, the researchers examined whether online comments strengthen or weaken the connection between advertising recognition and how tourists perceive the destination advertised. They also analysed YouTube comments for each study.
Adverts by the Korean Tourism Organization (KTO) provided an ideal sampling pool. “On YouTube, the KTO has recently created its advertisements in a way that mimics music videos, to avoid using the clichéd elements of destination advertising, and has drawn public attention because of its native advertising strategy”, the researchers explain.
In Study 1, one group of participants watched a KTO YouTube advert containing clichéd depictions of a destination (e.g., a montage of famous places, foreign tourists looking happy), while another group watched an advert created with a native advertising strategy. They were then surveyed to measure their perceptions of the adverts and the destinations shown.
Study 2’s participants were randomly assigned to groups that saw either a native or a non-native version of an advert and then read comments framed as either advertising-related (e.g., “advertisement,” “promo”) or non-advertising-related (e.g., “music video,” “video”). After viewing the advert and reading the comments, they completed a survey on their reactions.
This multi-method approach yielded interesting results. Study 1 showed that – as expected –native advertising enhanced the impact of a DMO YouTube advert. In Study 2, comment management further increased the effectiveness of native advertising on YouTube, with users’ perceptions of an advert affected by related comments.
Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, however, “the comments were not powerful enough to change tourists’ perceptions of the destination”. This may have been due to the complexity of the destination experience. “Altering one’s perception of a destination based solely on others’ opinions expressed on an online platform can be challenging”, the researchers observe.
These findings hold important implications for DMOs wishing to maximise the impact of their advertising on YouTube. First, native advertising is likely to be the best approach. “DMOs should focus on downplaying the persuasiveness of YouTube advertisements while creating them”, the researchers advise. For example, marketers should avoid the traditional “collage” effect and consider matching YouTube’s aesthetic and purpose by fashioning adverts in the form of entertaining videos.
“Second”, the researchers add, “our findings show that native destination advertisements are appreciated more by potential tourists when their native content is emphasised or highlighted in the comments”. DMOs can thus use YouTube’s “pin” function to draw attention to comments that describe their adverts as non-advertising content.
“Our findings provide DMOs with insights into the ‘how-to’ questions relating to optimal YouTube advertising”, the authors conclude. But their insights can be extended beyond YouTube. “On Facebook or Instagram”, they add, “DMOs could consider imitating the format of a personal user’s post”. On TikTok, DMOs could mimic or refer to reels made by ordinary users to minimise the impression of persuasion.
Seunghun Shin, Taekyung Kim, Sunyoung Hlee and Chulmo Koo (2025). Destination Advertising on YouTube: Effects of Native Advertising and Comment Management on Tourist Perception. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 798–815.
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For more than four decades, the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has refined a distinctive vision of hospitality and tourism education and become a world-leading hotel and tourism school. Ranked No. 1 in the world in the “Hospitality and Tourism Management” category in ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2025 for the ninth consecutive year; placed No. 1 globally in the “Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services” category in the University Ranking by Academic Performance in 2024/2025 for eight years in a row; rated No. 1 in the world in the “Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism” subject area by the CWUR Rankings by Subject 2017; and ranked No. 2 globally among comprehensive universities in the “Hospitality and Leisure Management” subject area in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, the SHTM is a symbol of excellence in the field, exemplifying its motto of Leading Hospitality and Tourism.
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