Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media in Australian Tourism

This report investigates the advantages and disadvantages of social media usage within the Australian tourism industry. It begins with an introduction to social media and its impact, followed by a project objective to identify the benefits and drawbacks for tourism businesses in Australia. The scope encompasses an examination of social media marketing strategies and the dynamic global market. The literature review explores existing research on social media's role in business, marketing, and customer engagement. The research methodology combines qualitative and quantitative approaches, including interviews and questionnaires. The report addresses research questions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of social media, typical social media channels, and the challenges faced. The conclusion synthesizes the findings, providing recommendations and insights into the effective use of social media for tourism businesses. The report also includes a discussion on validity, reliability, and research limitations.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Networks in Business
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................2
1. INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................3
2. PROJECT OBJECTIVE......................................................................................................3
3. PROJECT SCOPE..............................................................................................................3
4. LITERATURE REVIEW....................................................................................................5
5. RESEARCH QUESTION...................................................................................................8
5.1 Primary Question...........................................................................................................8
5.2 Secondary Questions........................................................................................................8
6. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY........................................................................................9
6.1 Qualitative........................................................................................................................9
6.2 Quantitative......................................................................................................................9
6.3 Validity and Reliability..................................................................................................10
6.4 Research Limitations......................................................................................................10
6.5 Research Plan.................................................................................................................10
7. CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................11
References................................................................................................................................12
Appendices...............................................................................................................................16
Appendix 1: Questionnaire...................................................................................................16

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1. INTRODUCTION
Social media tools are altering the manner in which people interact. Technological advances
have improved accessibility to social media, letting it become a part of daily life and routines
to people (Agresta, Bough, and Miletsky 2010). Social media has no specific definition agree
upon with most of the researchers and scholars due to the emergence of other concepts
alongside social media such as Web 2.0 (Morgado et al. 2011). However, Agresta, Bough and
Miletsky (2010) refers social marketing as a term for the combination of multiple instruments
and applications that forms the social capability of the web. Agresta and Bough (2010) define
social media marketing as the applications based on the internet that transmit consumer
generated content related to past experiences. Both individuals and organizations create and
interchange information and in one-on-one talks. The exchange platforms exist in different
forms such as blogs, social networks, video and image sharing, among others. The most
common ones include Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Twitter, etc. (Buted et al. 2014). The
tourism industry has not been left behind, and thus several studies have recognized the
significance of Web 2.0 in the hospitality sector (Xiang and Gretzel 2010; Gretzel and Yoo
2013, Ruzic and Bilos 2010). The objective of this study is to identify the advantages and the
disadvantages of the social media experienced by the Tourism businesses in Australia.
2. PROJECT OBJECTIVE
The goal of this research is to ascertain the advantages and disadvantages of the use of social
media in the tourism industry with a specific focus on Australia. Additionally, this paper will
examine the social media channels used in tourism business and customer habits in the
tourism sector.
3. PROJECT SCOPE
The project’ scope is to explore the advantages and disadvantages of the use of social media
in the tourism industry of Australia businesses. Tourism establishments in Australia will be

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used as a case study because of the emerging integration of social media marketing in the
Australia tourism ndustry. The study will critically examine the use of social media
marketing strategy by highlighting the opportunities and challenges. Additionally, the
dynamic global market will also be assessed in the light of using social media platforms for
customer relationship management. The researcher will therefore, systematically review and
discuss relevant literature materials to develop the background information of the topic under
study.

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4. LITERATURE REVIEW
Scuotto et al. (2017) describe social media as a combination of online applications that permit
the users namely customers, businesses or entrepreneurs to link and communicate with each
other. Kang et al. (2014) also note that social media brings the effectual reward of
encouraging active user involvement. From the perspective of business. Kim et al. (2015)
content that social media has transformed the business strictures via internet resource, by
employing it as an instrument to introduce products and services and marketing them for
sales. Similar concepts are shared by Keinänen and Kuivalainen (2015) who observes that the
present business market regards social media as a broad foundation in meeting the social and
business needs at the same time. The authors justify their conclusion through the increasing
use of social platforms for networking globally. The development of social media has taken
place through the rise and growth of the Web 2.0, on the other hand, it is also contested that
Web 2.0 and social media are entirely diverse ideas (Dalip et al. 2017).
The emergence and development of social media networks have benefited businesses through
the implementation of social media marketing strategy. However, its effectiveness depends
more on the content and context of communication. According to Yoo et al. (2016), social
media marketing strategy encompasses the execution of the social cycle, reduces costs of
business operations and thus fostering business growth. Social media marketing strategy
plays significant roles in business such as content marketing of products or services, making
sales, encouraging public relations, introducing value offers, widening the social cycle and
organizational profitability, fostering customer feedback communication, and thus leading to
general business performance (Costanza 2017).
Several studies have been carried out on the advantages of adopting social media marketing
(SMM) strategy in businesses. Kim and Ko (2012) surveyed the benefits of embracing social
media marketing in luxury products and found out that it increased interactions between firms

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and their customers enabling them to customize products and services to meet customer
needs, and accomplishing useful word of mouth (WOM) marketing. Furthermore, research
has shown that social media marketing fosters good customer relationship, influences
customer purchase intentions, and generates brand loyalty. De Vries et al. (2012) revealed
that social media was the best medium to promote associations between customers and
products or services. This is because social media marketing offers the firms a platform to
position their products or information about their services in the form of images, texts,
videos, infographs etc. Moreover, the availability of other alternatives like post sharing,
comments, hash tagging among others are used by customers to show the preferences,
acceptance, or denial of the given product or service. Habibi, et al. (2014) found out that the
constant association between the customers and the business creates a good rapport which
develops a positive attitude of the customers towards the products and services promoted
through the social media platform.
Contrariwise, SMM comes with disadvantages. The study by Kimmel & Kitchen (2014)
found out that WOM generated new innovative concepts for products and services, but also
led to the loss of potential customers due to the negative remarks made by unsatisfied
customers. Studies have also shown that social media influence customer purchase decisions
leading to impulsive buying due to increased product visibility and service information.
Constant exposure to promotional information by the reluctant buyer prompts him/her to
click on the post and as a result of the promotional techniques used, the customer develops
interest in the item or service (Shankar et al. 2016; Hsu and Cheng 2018). On the other hand,
negative reviews or communications concerning given product or services influences the
purchase intention of other consumers who had not experienced the product. This becomes an
advantage to the competing products or services.

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Hudson et al. (2016) opine that the integration of social media in business creates brand
awareness. The authors also found out that periodic spending of some hours on social to
establish and develop social network management increases the exposure of the products and
services to customers. Siamagka et al. (2015) also added that social media is the most
economical digital marketing technique for businesses because it permits content
customization which increases product visibility and awareness of services offered.
Consequently, information about products and services reaches several and distant markets
within a short period, and the customer feedbacks ensures that they are a participative
audience which can make recommendations for improvement.
Parveen et al. (2015) observed that the generation of site traffic by using social media is of
benefit to the organization because it enhances search engine rankings, and as a result, the
organization’s product and services are easily accessed by many thus increasing sales.
Businesses which have not integrated social media channels in their marketing strategy have
limited inbound traffic. Therefore, most of the customers are not aware of the products and
services offered by the firm leading to low sales (McCann and Barlow 2015). The use of
blogs, infographics, visual images, videos among others enables the formulation of an
intriguing, creative and unique content that attracts customers and develops interest in them
towards the marketed products or services.
Kilgour et al. (2015) contend that despite the noticeable benefits of social media in business,
it also comes with drawbacks which can equally be costly to the company. Social media
improves communication with customers through generating feedback, and this demands a
lot of devoted time, an aspect which can be expensive to small and medium-sized enterprises
with limited resources.

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The research by Elbaz et al. (2018) found out that social media can negatively impact the
organizations reputation especially in the hotel industry in situations when the customers are
dissatisfied with the services such as miscommunications, bad front desk services, etc.
Additionally, social media accounts have also been critiqued for unethical practices of
sharing individual confidential information and forced sales with customers (Dineva et al.
2017). Thus it is evident that all customers will welcome social media integration (Allcott
and Gentzkow 2017). Xanthopoulos et al. (2016) also noted that hashtags are mostly used for
airing grievances due to unsatisfied services or products. As a result negative publicity of the
organization’s reputation goes viral and the hashtag campaign ends up in abusive debates
with the business instead of using compensation strategy.

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5. RESEARCH QUESTION
5.1 Primary Question
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the use of social media by the
Tourism businesses in Australia?
5.2 Secondary Questions
1. What are the typical social media channels used in the tourism industry?
2. What are advantages and disadvantages of using social media in the tourism
industry?
3. What are the challenges encountered when applying social media as a medium
for business activities in the tourism industry?

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6. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
6.1 Qualitative
Qualitative data is to be conducted to provide an in-depth understanding of the research topic.
The researcher first developed general research questions then will afterward seek permission
of the relevant site for study through writing after doing a literature review of the suggested
topic. Convenience sampling will then be used to select the sample size of 50 out of 500
employees and tourists from 4 resorts, three restaurants, and three hotels distributed across
Australia. Semi-structured Interview method will be used to gather data because it ensures
equivalent coverage (Creswell and Creswell 2017), and it also takes relatively less time. The
interview discussions will be taped or noted down depending on the dictates of the
interviewee and analyzed.
6.2 Quantitative
The research will adopt a descriptive research design because it is the most appropriate in
collecting information about the current conditions. Questionnaires with close-ended
questions (Appendix 1) will be used to gather data to have ease and enhanced comparability
(Suri 2011). An interview will also be used support and validated the collected data (Suri
2011). The research will select ten establishments based on the obtained data from tourism
officer wherein is listed all hospitality companies. Purposive sampling and random sampling
will be used to select samples from the target population. This approach is preferred because
it will enable the selection criterion which is all hospitality establishments in Australia
currently employing social media marketing strategy. A sample size of 50 employees out of
500 employees and tourists across the ten establishments (4 resorts, three restaurants, and
three hotels) will be examined. The researcher will distribute the questionnaires through hand
delivery and collected after two weeks. The completed questionnaires will be checked for
completeness and reliability, then coded, grouped and then analyzed using SPSS, and results
presented in the form of tables and diagrams.

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6.3 Validity and Reliability
To ascertain validity and reliability of data, the questionnaires will first be tried by six
participants who are not to form part of the final survey. Any deviations are to be rectified
before the actual study.
6.4 Research Limitations
The sample size for the study is small for it only targets four resorts, three restaurants and
three hotels in entire Australia. This, therefore, limits the generalization of the findings to a
broader context
6.5 Research Plan
The study is expected to take approximately three months beginning April to June 2018.
Activity Start Date End Date
Duration
(Days)
Choosing study topic
12/04/201
8 20/04/2018 8
Developing of research
objectives
22/04/201
8 26/04/2018 4
Data Collection Approach
28/04/201
8 02/05/2018 4
Development of Questionnaire
04/05/201
8 10/05/2018 6
Project Proposal organization
12/05/201
8 20/05/2018 8
Sample size of survey
22/05/201
8 26/05/2018 4
Data collection 27/05/201 09/06/2018 13

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8
Data analysis
11/06/201
8 18/06/2018 7
Write-up and submission
23/06/201
8 28/06/2018 5