From brochures to bytes : destination branding through social, mobile, and AI : a systematic narrative review with meta-analysis

Digital transformation has re-engineered tourism marketing and how destination branding competes for tourist attention, yet scholarship offers little systematic quantification of these changes. Drawing on 160 peer-reviewed studies published between 1990 and 2025, we combine grounded-theory thematic synthesis with a random-effect meta-analysis of 60 datasets to trace branding performance across five technological eras (pre-Internet and brochure era: to mid-1990s; Web 1.0: 1995-2004; Web 2.0: 2004-2013; mobile first: 2013-2020; AI-XR: 2020-2025). Results reveal three structural shifts: (i) dialogic engagement replaces one-way promotion, (ii) credibility migrates to user-generated content, and (iii) artificial intelligence-driven personalisation reconfigures relevance, while mobile and virtual reality marketing extend immersion. Meta-analytic estimates show the strongest gains for engagement intentions (g = 0.57), followed by brand awareness (g = 0.46) and image (g = 0.41). Other equity dimensions (attitudes, loyalty, perceived quality) also improved on average, but to a lesser degree. Visual, UGC-rich, and influencer posts on highly interactive platforms consistently outperform brochure-style content, while robustness checks (fail-safe N, funnel symmetry, leave-one-out) confirm stability. We conclude that digital tools amplify, rather than replace, co-creation, credibility, and context. By fusing historical narrative with statistical certainty, the study delivers a data-anchored roadmap for destination marketers, researchers, and policymakers preparing for the AI-mediated decade ahead.