Travellers increasingly use a combination of photographs, texts and hashtags to expressing their attitude towards tourism destinations (TDs). Existing destination branding literature has not yet investigated how consumers express their love towards TDs on social media. This study addresses this knowledge gap and explores how destination brand love (DBL) is expressed on Instagram using a mixed-methods approach. Study one consists of a qualitative visual content analysis of 700 user-generated photographs; while study two adopts text analytics with a sample of 48,783 posts. The findings show Instagram users’ declaration of DBL is expressed through photographs of some destination attributes (natural & architectural, people, public transportation, food, weather), accompanied by specific positive emotions (amazement, attractiveness, pleasure, preference, enchantment, nostalgia, belongingness, intimacy). The findings also illustrate how Instagram users express their love by providing emotional support when the destination goes through a crisis and that different stakeholders co-create the emotional capital of TDs.

旅行者越来越多地使用照片，文字和标签的组合来表达他们对旅游目的地的态度。现有的目的地品牌文献尚未调查消费者如何在社交媒体上表达对TD的热爱。这项研究解决了这一知识差距，并探讨了如何使用混合方法在Instagram上表达目的地品牌爱（DBL）。研究之一包括对700张用户生成的照片进行定性视觉内容分析；研究二采用文本分析，样本为48,783个帖子。调查结果表明，Instagram用户声明DBL是通过一些目的地属性（自然与建筑，人，公共交通，食物，天气）的照片表达的，并带有特定的积极情绪（惊奇，吸引力，愉悦，喜好，结界，怀旧，归属感，亲密感）。这些发现还说明了Instagram用户如何在目的地经历危机时通过情感支持来表达自己的爱，以及不同的利益相关者共同创造TD的情感资本。