Influence of Social Media on Choosing Tourist Destination: A Study Based on Sydney Hospitality Industry

This paper aims to examine the process of social networking sites can become the main method for gaining the detailed and fast information for the choice of tourism destinations. This paper would focus on the benefits of the social media promoting tourist destinations for reaching the wider audiences in global perspectives.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Assessment 3: Research Proposal and Literature Review
Topic: Influence of social media towards choosing tourist destination: a study based on Sydney
hospitality industry
Student’s name:
Name of the university:
Author’s note:

1RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Table of Contents
Background......................................................................................................................................2
Significance.....................................................................................................................................2
Scope................................................................................................................................................3
Problem statement and objectives...................................................................................................4
Literature review..............................................................................................................................5
Influence of social media on choosing tourism destination.........................................................5
The theoretical perspective of social media influence.................................................................6
Advantages of the power of social media....................................................................................7
Challenges for tourists to use social media..................................................................................8
Reference List..................................................................................................................................9
Appendices....................................................................................................................................11

2RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Background
The advent of social media and technology has made the tourists’ journey different than
the journey used to be. Now, the journey does not rely on the travel guidebook or paper maps to
find out the latest destinations. Nowadays, tourists find the information through accessing the
internet or social media pages of TripAdvisor, Buzzfeed or the friends’ Instagram photos that
depict the experience of latest vacations. As stated by Tuten and Solomon (2017), social media
has become the place to access the real-time data from various sources about travel destinations
and the people’s approach to plan the trip has changed. Kaur (2016), supported this by saying the
path to travel a place; both experience and purchasing of the tickets, has become nonlinear. The
tourists just log in to the social media accounts and browse to the friends' co-workers and
influencers pages to find the vacation inspiration and travel log; therefore, it supports the way to
discover new destinations. In addition, Sydney has become a targeted tourist destination for
domestic and international tourists as the people do not miss the opportunity without visiting
Sydney. There are many places where the tourists want to go, such as Sydney Opera House,
Sydney Harbour Bridge, Bondi Beach and Darling Harbour. Therefore, the hospitality industry
in Sydney has been posted the images of nature and the festive activities on their social media
pages to attract the guests. Hotels share their ‘room view’ along with famous tourist spot to
attract the guests. The hospitality organisations ask the tourists to share their experience on hotel
booking e-commerce, social media and on the hotels’ websites with feedback so that other guests
take influence from these.

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Significance
This paper aims to examine the process of social networking sites can become the main
method for gaining the detailed and fast information for the choice of tourism destinations. This
paper would focus on the benefits of the social media promoting tourist destinations for reaching
the wider audiences in global perspectives. From this paper, the marketing and management
departments of the hospitality sector can gain knowledge about developing ad hoc marketing
tools and strategies along with benefits of competitive advantage in the industry. This research
will be significant from the latest perspective of the young generation as the new generation
spend their leisure time on social media pages and they get influenced by the images, posts,
news, information and videos shared by their peers and influencers. Therefore, the marketing
department of hospitality sectors in Sydney area must understand the importance of running
video, audio, images, text and gif across the online environment that can increase the footfall on
their hotels and resorts. Social media is now the online communication system that provides
information to negatively influence the people or to promote the places, brands, environment or
the hospitality organisations. Most importantly, the influence of social media on making choice
of a tourist destination is new and this study focuses narrowly on Sydney based hospitality
industry; therefore, secondary data are scarce. This paper will be significant to show the
importance of social media campaigning and advertisement for the hospitality industry to
influence on the tourists’ perception. The tourists can gain knowledge from this paper about the
non-formal messages on the social media and sometimes, the posts are wrong and distorted.
Scope
The demographic scope of this study are the tourists; mainly the young generation. This
study also focuses on the e-marketers who need to understand the importance of social media to

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gain maximum leads in such competitive environment. The geographical scope of the study
encompasses from domestic and the international tourists as social media help the hospitality
organisations to reach international tourists as well. In Sydney, many international tourists come
for leisure and business purposes. The Sydney based hotels can target these tourists through
social media posts, texts, images and offers. People nowadays have enough options to spend
vacations across the globes and common people are choosing some off-bit spots where they can
enjoy solitude. This study focuses on Sydney based hotels as what the hospitality organisations
are doing to attract the tourists to choose Sydney. Temporal scope of the study is that this
research will be conducted during June to August 2018, winter as maximum tourists do come
during this time.
Problem statement and objectives
Millennials plan the trip to visit some specific places; however, 59% of the social
networking users who are millennials cancel the specific trip due to FOMO (Fear of Missing
Out) and they plan for other off-bit destinations to travel to avoid crowd as they see on their
social media pages (McLennan et al. 2017). 87% of Millennials agreed on Facebook that they
use social media for gaining the travelling inspiration as they get easily user-generated content as
it impacts on the initial decision (Walker 2018). Sydney based hotels get booking from corporate
section; this hospitality industry facing the issue of lack of international leisure tourists.
Therefore, Sydney based hotels need to find out some ‘off-track or new’ locations to attract the
leisure travellers and millennials.
Research question
What is the influence of social media towards choosing tourist destination?

5RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
This research paper mainly focuses on Sydney hospitality industry.
Objectives:
 To explore the social media strategies used by the hospitality industry
 To review the existing literature based on using social media to choose the tourist
destination
 To find out the influence of social media on the tourists to choose the hospitality
organisations in Sydney
Literature review
Influence of social media on choosing tourism destination
The organisations target the customers and users of social media and sometimes the
targeted public may behave in a different way. As stated by Minazzi (2015), the PR team of the
hospitality sector can face the issue of customers’ behaviour and the organisations encounter this
behaviour like active, reviewer, passive, viral and indifferent. Social media is a powerful
communication and these communication channel appeal to the people. Social media platform
are making the connection and communication fast and people have little time to talk to people.
Therefore, the common people share their information, posts, images, texts and videos through
social media. The tourism does not make an exception and people start believing the pictures,
videos and experiencing that the people share in social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook
and Instagram. Nowadays, fewer people visit the travel agencies as the people can get the
information through social media and online platform (Walker 2018). People can plan the
tourism destinations shared by the peers and friends. The people share the link of tourism
destination, by clicking on the link; the people can find the full description of the places (Kim et

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al. 2017). Changes in the communication and information caused by the internet determine the
tourist spots. The tourist can also get information from the friends and family members about the
touristic services through interacting online and it has been diminishing the role of traditional
onsite travel companies and agencies (Mkono and Tribe 2017). Millennials are using the social
media as the mode of information regarding tourism spot and the choice of online users of the
tourist spots are influenced by the security offered of the place, assurance and reliability of the
service providers. In addition, in recent time, the travel agencies and hospitality industry can
attract the guests being visible over social media platforms.
The theoretical perspective of social media influence
Social Staircase model
Social Staircase model consists of four steps. In the very first step, the organisations
establish the strategy that may support the business. This strategy will help the organisation to
achieve the vision and goal of the organisation regarding promotion. The organisation needs to
start to risk the money by taking early adoption of the initiative (Kaur 2016). Step 2 is about
content strategy and this step helps the organisation to make the presence within in the industry.
This step states about values that would be provided to the target audience. The third step is
about the tools that are used for communication to the target audiences. These tools can be
Facebook, Slide-Share, Twitter, Google Buzz and LinkedIn. The organisations can dig deeper to
reach large numbers of audiences through using maximum tools. The organisations of late are
using social media analytics tools through which the organisations can get the real-time data and
information from all the social media sources. The organisation can compare and contrast the
performance of the social media through these web analytics (Ashley and Tuten 2015). Step 4 is
about the conversion of the followers of social media into the leads. Through social media, the

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organisations can listen to the audiences, talk back and listen to the audiences; therefore, social
media increases the interactivity and conversion.
Viral spiral model
The social viral spiral model is based on the Brian Solis Prism and it translates the
services and tools to create the social flowers depending on the organisational achievement. The
organisation needs to get the idea about the content of spiral (Munar and Jacobsen 2016). The PR
team use the social media as three types of spirals; first, the organisation can use the social media
to as slow-operation. Medium or value-based spiral uses when the organisation needs to target
the audiences. The fast or buzz spiral is used when the organisation launches the new services or
products. Some of the things that affect the intensity of the spirals and these are a time of actual
publishing, internet behavioural pattern, numbers of friends, amount of social networks, where
the customers intend to interact (Hudson 2015).
Advantages of the power of social media
In the social media, there are various types of communities those are acting in online and
the communication strategies are influenced by these. These communities are affinity-based
communities, inside company communities, vertical companies and the horizontal communities
(Zeng and Gerritsen 2015). Social media has the power to influence the customers to use the
services or products of the particular brands. The PR team can encourage the use of branded
‘hashtag' on Twitter where this campaign helps the organisation to reach maximum guests. 78%
of the millennials have the desired experience on the desirable services and the organisations can
capitalise the use of campaign promoting through social media. In addition, as stated by
Harringan et al. (2015), the hospitality organisations can inspire the travellers during the

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vacation as 97% of the millennials share the travel photos on social media. Therefore, this photo
sharing can change others’ plan as these images are real-time. The organisations in Sydney can
encourage the travellers to share the post-trip images and this would increase the brand image of
the particular hotel and social media viewers will get the inspiration to visit this place. The
travellers are trying to visit mainly what they are watching on the social media (Mkono and Tribe
2017). The hospitality organisations can send the messages to the social media communities. It
will inspire the community members to generate maximum leads from the social media as well.
Challenges for tourists to use social media
Hospitality industry and the Sydney based Tourism are using the social media to promote
the business. However, the social media can mislead the travellers also as sometimes wrong
information is shared through social media and imperfect integration of the multiple components
of marketing strategy can be the key issue of using social media. In Sydney, the hotels spend
almost 5% of their revenues on internet marketing (Munar and Jacobsen 2016). The problem of
social media advertising on tourism is about spam advertising and the security issues of the
guests. The travellers can pay the travel agencies or the hospitality organisations without keeping
any evidence; therefore, this can lead to the issue for the travellers.

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Reference List
Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1),
pp.15-27.
Destinations NSW: https://www.destinationnsw.com.au/tourism/facts-and-figures/sydney-
tourism-statistics [Retrieved on 25th Apr 2018]
Harrigan, P., Evers, U., Miles, M. and Daly, T., 2017. Customer engagement with tourism social
media brands. Tourism Management, 59, pp.597-609.
Hudson, S., Roth, M.S., Madden, T.J. and Hudson, R., 2015. The effects of social media on
emotions, brand relationship quality, and word of mouth: An empirical study of music festival
attendees. Tourism Management, 47, pp.68-76.
Kaur, G., 2016. Social media marketing. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 4(7), pp.34-
45.
Kim, S.E., Lee, K.Y., Shin, S.I. and Yang, S.B., 2017. Effects of tourism information quality in
social media on destination image formation: The case of Sina Weibo. Information &
Management, 54(6), pp.687-702.
McLennan, C.L.J., Becken, S. and Moyle, B.D., 2017. Framing in a contested space: Media
reporting on tourism and mining in Australia. Current Issues in Tourism, 20(9), pp.960-980.
Minazzi, R., 2015. Social media marketing in tourism and hospitality. Heidelberg: Springer.

10RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Mkono, M. and Tribe, J., 2017. Beyond reviewing: Uncovering the multiple roles of tourism
social media users. Journal of Travel Research, 56(3), pp.287-298.
Munar, A.M. and Jacobsen, J.K.S., 2016. Motivations for sharing tourism experiences through
social media. Tourism Management, 43, pp.46-54.
Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. London: Sage.
Walker, J.R., 2018. Introduction to hospitality. Sydney: Pearson Higher Ed.
Zeng, B. and Gerritsen, R., 2015. What do we know about social media in tourism? A
review. Tourism Management Perspectives, 10, pp.27-36.

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Appendices
Appendix 1
Figure: Daily activities users on social media in Sydney
(Source: Destinationsnsw.com.au 2018)

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Appendix 2
Survey questionnaire
10 close-ended questions will be given to the survey respondents who are travellers. The
respondents group will be selected through Facebook page. All the respondents will be members
of Facebook page called ‘Sydney Tourism’. There will be two types of questions, demographic
and subjective.
1. Specify your gender.
 Male
 Female
2. Which age group do you belong to?
 18-25
 26-35
 36-45
 46-55
3. Have you ever watched any travelling related post on your social media timeline?
 Yes
 No
4. Do you follow or like any travel related page or group on social media?
 Yes
 No

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5. How far do you agree that people get convinced to visit the same place by watching any friend
or peers’ photos on social media?
 Strongly agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly disagree
6. Have you ever asked your friends’ about any place after seeing posts or videos of them on
Facebook or Instagram?
 Yes
 No
 Don’t remember
7. How far do you agree that people like to visit more now on off-bit places?
 Strongly agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly disagree
8. Which group of people follow social media trend more on choosing tourism spot?
 Millennials
 Baby boomers

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 Generation X
 Older people
9. Do you think traditional travel agency need to advertise more on social media pages?
 Yes
 No
10. According to you, people can get cheated if they blindly follow social media updates on
choosing a tourism place?
 Yes
 No