Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of hospitality and tourism studies that have used social media analytics to collect, examine, summarize and interpret ``big data{''} derived from social media. It proposes improved approaches by documenting past and current analytic practice addressed by the selected studies in social media analytics. Design/methodology/approach Studies from the past 18 years were identified and collected from five international electronic bibliographic databases. Social media analytics-related terms and keywords in the titles, keywords or abstracts were used to identify relevant articles. Book chapters, conference papers and articles not written in English were excluded from analysis. The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guided the search, and Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan's (2013) social media analytics framework was adapted to categorize methods reported in each article. Findings The research purpose of each study was identified and categorized to better understand the questions social media analytics were being used to address, as well as the frequency of each method's use. Since 2014, rapid growth of social media analytics was observed, along with an expanded use of multiple analytic methods, including accuracy testing. These factors suggest an increased commitment to and competency in conducting comprehensive and robust social media data analyses. Improved use of methods such as social network analysis, comparative analysis and trend analysis is recommended. Consumer-review networks and social networking sites were the main social media platforms from which data were gathered; simultaneous analysis of multi-platform/sources of data is recommended to improve validity and comprehensive understanding. Originality/value This is the first systematic literature review of the application of social media analytics in hospitality and tourism research. The study highlights advancements in social media analytics and recommends an expansion of approaches; common analytical methods such as text analysis and sentiment analysis should be supplemented by infrequently used approaches such as comparative analysis and spatial analysis.