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The purpose of this study is to examine how hotel brands communicate on social media before and during the pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in relation to the tourism season.

To gain insights into the communication of Italian hotel brands on social media, this study applies a qualitative methodology. Using the text mining technique, topic modelling was conducted on a sample of 5,032 posts from Italian 5-star hotel brands shared on the hotels' official Facebook pages.

The results show that hotel brands used essentially the same communication strategy in the tourism seasons before and after the pandemic outbreak, but with a particular focus on trust, safety and cordiality during the pandemic. Hotel brands focussed intensively on brand awareness, customer engagement and special activities that promote memorable and authentic experiences as well as luxury service quality.

This study contributes to the theoretical and empirical sense by bridging the concepts of tourism and hospitality, social media and corporate communication.