YouTube as a Tool for Promotion in Tourism

The paper shows video content in YouTube as a new tool for promotion in tourism. It defines the main terms as marketing, promotion, user generated content, YouTuber, influencer etc. The aims of the research were to present, characteriz e and compare the popularity of selected YouTube channels with tourist content from Poland and other countries. Also an exemplary action using YouTube conducted by the Polish Tourism Organization was described and its effects were assessed. The analysis of empirical studies confirmed that respondents know tourist channels (mainly Polish), but their popularity is much lower than the popularity of top YouTubers. YouTube rather rarely is used to search for tourist content and general entertainment, lifestyle , fashion or gaming are more popular topics.
Respondents use the site to search for tourist content, but less than a half of respondents follow YouTubers’ recommendations. A small role is also played by YouTube in the process of the selection of destinatio ns by users who rarely rely on materials available on the site when choosing the place of
the ir future travels. That said, the c ontinuous increase in website and the analysis of research results confirmed that YouTube may be an important tool for tourism p romotion and the popularization of travelling.