Visual Social Media Communication of Italian Luxury Hotels and the Pandemic: An AI-Assisted Content Analysis

 This study analyses the visual social media communication of Italian 5-star hotel brands to investigate whether it has changed over the course of COVID-19. An AI-based image content analysis approach was used to extract the most frequently ascribed labels from 2,439 collected photos of three consecutive year samples. The results of the performed content analysis show that the visual communication of the hotel brand is mainly focused on interior design and the natural environment, with the pandemic stimulating the use of the latter. The study contributes the literature by reinforcing the importance of relative consistency in luxury brand communication even in turbulent times.