  Citation: Hysa, B.; Zdonek, I.; Karasek, A. Social Media in Sustainable Tourism Recovery. Sustainability 2022, 14, 760. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su14020760 Academic Editor: Yoonjae Nam Received: 20 December 2021 Accepted: 8 January 2022 Published: 11 January 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Social Media in Sustainable Tourism Recovery Beata Hysa 1 , Iwona Zdonek 1, * and Aneta Karasek 2 1 Department of Economy and Informatics, Faculty of Organization and Management, Silesian University of Technology, Akademicka 2A, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland; beata.hysa@polsl.pl 2 Institute of Management and Quality Sciences, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Plac Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej 5, 20-031 Lublin, Poland; aneta.karasek@umcs.pl * Correspondence: iwona.zdonek@polsl.pl Abstract: In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial to manage tourist destinations to allow the recovery of tourism on the one hand and reduce its negative impact on the environment and the local community on the other. Information provided via social media (SM) by both residents and tourists can help restart tourism. This paper identifies ways of sharing travel experiences by tourists on social media. The research was conducted in Poland on a sample of 271 respondents from each generation using questionnaires. Results showed that the way tourists use SM during and after their trip differs by generation and gender what could be used in promoting responsible behaviour for sustainable tourism. Differences between generations can be observed in behaviours such as ongoing planning the trip, obtaining information about the place to stay, keeping a photo album for friends, and writing reviews. Moreover, more often than men, women use SM to obtain information about the place of stay and share their impressions of the trip by sending MMS or emails. Tracking tourists’ travel behaviour on social media will allow city managers to gather information and respond to their needs and expectations and ensure effective urban management and city promotion. Keywords: social media; SM; sustainable tourism; urban management; smart tourism; tourism recovery 1. Introduction Efficient urban management is a big challenge to meet the needs of residents as well as tourists. Tourism is a multi-faceted phenomenon that affects both the environment and the society that is associated with the tourist region. In recent years we have observed diversified tourist behaviour in tourism. On the one hand, we have experienced the problem of overtourism, [1,2] that caused the intense concentration of tourists in the visited places, negatively influencing both the environment and residents. On the other hand, in the last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a drastic decline in tourist travel, resulting in significant losses in the overall tourism industry, which had an impact on urban management and city revenues. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a decline of 1 billion international tourist arrivals in 2020, resulting in a loss of $1.3 trillion in total international tourism revenue [3]. International tourist arrivals (overnight visitors) in the first seven months of 2021 were 40% below the levels of 2020 and still 80% down when compared to the same period of the pre-pandemic year 2019 [3]. In addition, between 100 and 120 million tourism jobs were at risk [3]. It is estimated that tourism recovery worldwide to pre-pandemic conditions will occur in 2024 [4]. It can be predicted that if the number of people vaccinated increases and the number of cases of disease decreases, more and more countries will open up to travellers. This indicates that as soon as the restrictions are lifted, we can expect a significant increase in the number of tourists, which will undoubtedly help the tourism industry to recover financially. However, mass travel may threaten the sustainability and cause the spread of the coronavirus outbreak and increase the epidemic risk. Therefore, tourism city managers face a significant challenge to ensure the right conditions for sustainable tourism. Sustainability 2022, 14, 760. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14020760 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability