In the marketing context, Customer Engagement (CE) is found to enhance satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. Social media plays a vital role in engaging customers with firms/brands. Tourism brands are also actively engaging their customers on their social media; customers are also actively participating and engaging on social media to exhibit their intentions towards brands. These two-way actions between customers and tourism brands on social media need to be empirically examined. The main aim of this study is to empirically investigate the role of Customer Engagement with Tourism Brands (CETB) in improving the brand loyalty of the customers while they participate in social media to interact with their preferred tourism brands. The research followed a survey method with a sample size of 319. The respondents are the followers of top India travel & tourism brands on Facebook and Twitter. The study reveals the mediating role of CETB in enhancing the brand loyalty of customers. 

Travel & Tourism is one the fastest growing sector across the globe. According to (WTTC, 2017b), the total contribution of tourism to world GDP was USD 7,613.3 billion and is expected to grow by 3.6% in 2017 and 3.9% per annum by 2027. Tourism in India is one of the key contributing sectors to the economy and ranks 7th in the world regarding total contribution to GDP (WTTC, 2017a). Tourism contributes a total of 9.6% to the GDP of India and is predicted to increase by 10.0% by 2027 (WTTC, 2017a). The increase in tourism in India is growing due to several reasons like robust demand for foreign tourists, attractive opportunities, diverse attractions, and supportive tourism policies. 

The five dimensional scale of CETB has been validated with proper statistical procedure in the Indian tourism context. The scale can be recommended as a comprehensive tool to measure the customer engagement with tourism brands. The study also finds the mediating role of CETB in the relationship between participation and brand loyalty. Customers participate on the social media brand pages of tourism and travels brands to share, express and receive information and experience related to these brands. By which the members participating benefit with the information which positive improves their loyalty towards the brand.

In this process the brands also benefit by understanding the needs of the customers through their comments, likes and recommendations. These cues help marketers to understand the strengths and weakness of their service offering. This will help brands serve better according to the expectations of the customers. Hence, it can be concluded that it is very important to engagement customer with appropriate and relevant information to increase brand loyalty as mere participation drive loyalty, it is through customer engagement the participation of customer leads to brand loyalty.

Limitations

The primary limitation of the study is to consider the final behavioral outcome of customers, i.e., loyalty as a consequence of CE. The study did not consider the immediate consequences of CE like satisfaction, commitment and trust defined in the literature. The future research should attempt to include the possible and relevant antecedents and consequences of CE within the tourism context to have a comprehensive study of the role of CE.

Though the sample size is justified to be adequate in terms of the statistical technique used, it is more appropriate to increase the sample size to generalize the results; considering the vast population of customer's participation on social media with tourism brands.

The study followed a non-probable sampling technique to collect the data, which we expect would bring more generalizable results if a probability-based sampling technique is followed. The selection of online tourism brands is based on the most number of followers of the brands on social media (Facebook and Twitter). However, a considering a single firm and a case study based method would provide greater insights into the engagement concept.