Understanding tourists’ motivations to launch a boycott on social media: A case study of the #BoycottMurree campaign in Pakistan

Abstract

This research paper studies the domestic tourism destination boycott of Murree, the most popular tourist spot in Pakistan. Murree, a hill spot in the footsteps of the Himalayan mountain ranges, attracts millions of tourists from all over Pakistan every year due to its natural scenery and easy accessibility. However, weak regulation and unmanageable demand have made the local hospitality industry quixotic, prompting affiliated businesses in Murree to exploit tourists. Subsequently, the #BoycottMurree campaign was launched on social media at the beginning of 2018; this campaign gained quickly momentum, and Murree reported declines in business for the first time during the summer season of 2018. Using a netnographic case study approach of the #BoycottMurree campaign it found that the communication revolved around instrumental boycott motives and non-instrumental boycott motives. Moreover, the tourist ethnocentrism theme naturally emerged from the data, advocating anti-boycott. Overall, the results theoretically inform the literature by extrapolating tourist boycott notions in terms of domestic tourism and pointing out the ways in which domestic tourism boycotts may be different from international tourism boycotts. The results also guide domestic tourism organizations and businesses about the importance of developing competing destinations.