Social Media Impact on Hospitality: A Giraffe Restaurant Case Study

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments. This project analyzes social media's impact on Giraffe Restaurant.

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HND TTM
Pearson BTEC
Level 4
Hospitality Provision in the Travel and Tourism Sector
Lecturer: George W Muwonge
Research Proposal
Research Title: SOCIAL MEDIA (FACEBOOK , INSTAGRAM, TWITTER) AND
HOSPITALITY -CASE STUDY OF GIRAFFE RESTAURANT IN UK AIRPORTS
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Task 1.4
 Title or Topic
The chosen topic is Social media (Facebook , Instagram, and Twitter) and its impact on the
hospitality industry, by use of the case study of giraffe restaurant in UK
 Brief Introduction:
By the emergence of Web 2.0 there are numerous things that people can do through internet.
People just don't have access to emails not just passively absorbing the static information rather
there is much more to the Internet now. The web is a platform for sharing information, holding
decent dialogues, developing links in social as well as business terms.
The social media has been applied by various time groups of businesses for integrating their
marketing plans. Therefore these businesses are infusing the mixture of advertisements, sales
promotions, public relations for or creating customer oriented message. By the coming up of
such platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, there is an opportunity of getting exceptional
access to the customers. Nowadays social media is available to everybody who has internet
connection, therefore in the hospitality industry also it can be utilised for creating brand fairness
and facilitating direct feedback from the clients. In this research the case study of Giraffe
restaurant in the UK airports has been considered. A business which realises the benefits of
social media is truly conscious that social media is important in creating fresh business relations
in the present competitive and web-based markets.
 Research Question or Hypothesis:
The below research questions will be assessed:
Q1: To what degree does the insertion of a client blog effect perception of the customers of
Giraffe hotel in UK airport?
Q2: To what level does the kind of the remarks (encouraging or off-putting) on social media
effect the perceptions of the hotel web site?
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 Aims and Objectives:
The intent of the present research is to inspect if clients see social media based sources of
marketing information and extra conventional sources of internet-based marketing information,
as two different things.
 Objectives
1. To assess the impact of Social Media networks in the hospitality industry.
2. To assess the effectiveness of social media sites vs. online magazines.
3. To assess the effect of social media on the purchasing power
Rationale
The first chapter is the Introduction which involves the introduction of use of social media on the
Giraffe restaurant in the UK airports. The second chapter includes the literature review, wherein
social media and its impact have been studied. The efficiency of the blogs vs. online magazines
has been done by use of primary and secondary researches. Finally the power of social media has
been explained by the use of the case study of Giraffe restaurant in the UK airports. The third
chapter includes the methodology i.e. the population, sampling, instrumentation, processes,
research designs and analysis. Chapter four has got the analysis of the study, with the conclusion
in the fifth chapter. The survey will be used for the primary data gathering along with the
descriptive analysis.
Access to Primary Data
The target population chosen for this research is the customers, staffs and guests to the Giraffe
restaurant in the UK. The accessible population was provided with the survey questionnaire to
understand the effect of the social media on the hotel’s guests and their perception.
The participants in the research comprised of both the guest and human resources who got an
email with a request to take part. The whole accessible population, 75 individuals, were sampled
at random and allotted to 3 survey groups, with every group getting a different webpage to
review prior to completion of the survey (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). This descriptive
project made use of the survey method to look at research subjects and linked hypotheses.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to look at the relation among the type of social
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media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) and participant perceptions for the chosen information
and the Giraffe hotel.
Scope and Importance
This research is significant to the hospitality industry as it will give a thorough assessment of the
social media strategies used by the Giraffe hotel. This information can afterward be utilized to
guide marketers to highly valuable marketing strategies in the prospect. This study is significant
to the researcher as it will widen his knowledge regarding the marketing strategies of the
hospitality sector of UK.
Feasibility
The Gantt Chat in appendix shows the timelines and plan for carrying out the research and its
submission. Planning and organization are an ability of this researcher. The researcher finds it
hard to complete this dissertation as he has to depend on other people, like the interviewee. The
researcher had to become skilled at dealing with amendments in plans, modification to time-line,
and postponement in finishing phases of the dissertation. The researcher looks it as a main
learning point for him in this research that will be forever useful to him.
Literature Review
Social Media
Social media means the online groups that are informal, flowing, and participatory (Klapdor,
2013). These types of groupings provide the member a chance to put out, direct, rank, evaluate,
create, and interrelate to the online content. In fact, social media is an expression for marketing
pages, virtual arenas, social news, online forums, and judgment giving sites.
Hotel brands are laying down the outlets on social media WebPages like Twitter, Instagram and
Facebook. In addition to making up of their own account, hotels and resorts are getting in touch
with the third-party websites, such as Hotels.com and Trip Advisor, to restore their reviews of
clients along with the competitive setting (Thevenot, 2013). With additional information
available to the hotel and leisure voyagers in a similar way, potential customers can find lots of
deals and actually discover what they want without getting away from their computer.
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The Effect of Social Media Marketing
The 2001 was the years when the web bubble had burst leading to a huge change in the way
information is communicated. Earlier the websites had been static, and just provided
information, but now they have become more energetic and interactive. Chan and Guillet (2011)
stated that numerous e-marketing approaches have been suggested by industry specialists like
integration of e-marketing strategy with diverse serviceable areas of the hotel, to an always
developing, committed e- marketing department.
Social media as Purchasing Power
The development of social media has added to the buying power. The editorial “Role of social
media in online travel information search” (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010) states that there are over 3
million UK people online; the possibility for brands and organizations to get connected to social
media is soaring. People forever wish to be joined, and the web provides them lots of chances
that were impracticable earlier. Now the businesses are attempting to utilize social media for
brand publicity and get in touch with customers. The creation of internet-linked mobile gadgets
and the boost of broadband connections are assisting the UK citizens' go forward in social media.
The influence of Social Media as a Branding Tool
Social media is used by the client regarding how they get details. Before any booking, they
would research online for their requirements, thus before making any decision when there is a
huge amount of time investment when the online initiatives are made strategically and the
Travelers are capable of seeing the outcome of the reference (Computer economics, 2010). Even
though hotels experience healthy Returns on investments for increasing the intensity on the time
day spend on building the Brand on the online market by. It is important to keep in mind that
even though some people would not make booking online, still they would utilize online
resources for coming to a selection.
Facebook
Facebook marketing has become a very important way and an incredible approach to remain
visible and effective by creating a facade or showing the online presence (Lanz, Fischhof and
Lee, 2010). Facebook is one of the highly successful social networks and it has almost 500
million active users. Therefore it has surpassed the previous social networking giant MySpace. In
Facebook the individuals have created their profiles however hotels do not need any profile.
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Hotel is just like a brand and it can have a page rather than a profile. Hotel using the Facebook
has to distinguish its audience and should create the pages as per the demographics of the
audiences. After gathering this kind of information, the content is made. The Facebook page
should have right exposure, motivation, and awareness. Under brand can be helped by Facebook
by enhancement in number of followers for the brand.
Twitter
It is a useful way of communicating, either by Reading or getting the latest reports to virtual
communication and creating a group. People want to be on Twitter for communicating find the
visible benefit for hospitality business to use social media is the customer servicing email and
Twitter is the supreme way to resolve the customer link problems or just for having a positive
effect on the guest by thanking them or just saying welcome throughout tweet (Scott and
Orlikowski, 2010). This way the business can go onto the extra mile in the customer service area.
Instagram
As per Smith (2011) the Instagram is a social networking website which is owned by Facebook,
Inc. in this the videos and photos are shared and therefore the hospitality business can get
benefited by sharing it's best pictures and videos for getting in touch with the customers, helping
them and drawing them towards the business mind these videos and pictures can also be about
any event of any organization which might have held in the hotel or any demand stretching or
launching of any new product (McKay, 2010). As the videos and pictures are uploaded, they will
go to masses and finally the objective of utilising the Instagram is to attract people towards the
hotel.
Decision making (Theory) and influence of Social Media
Decision-making is generally described as a procedure or set of activities which are involved in
recognising a problem, searching for information, defining the different alternatives and
choosing any one of them by giving them ranking. As per Hoyer and McInnis (2010) the need
recognition takes place when the customer realises that there is something which is not fulfilled
and the requirements might get encouraged by any external or internal stimuli. Social media is
such an external stimuli that might tell the customer about his needs which were not known
earlier. After the stage of recognising the need, the customer wants to get information. By use of
social media the needed information can be achieved from Twitter, Instagram or Facebook
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comedy guarding the goods and services wanted (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2011). the customers
carry out internal and external research for getting information and therefore social media is
valuable to ask for such information from people, friends or other individuals on the internet
wind social media has a great effect on customers when it is about initial buying of any good and
in case the item is very costly because then the customer usually performs more research and
also looks for different alternatives (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). The customers can utilise social
Media platform for getting information and therefore it also gives the organisations and
opportunity to get two way communications and get benefited from it.
Research Methodology (1.4)
The research has been in form of the descriptive assessment, by use of a survey. Survey method
has been valuable as the researcher could control the result and the measurement. The research
will aim at getting responses from as any individuals as possible, for the Giraffe restaurant in UK
airports. These respondents will be randomly chosen, staffs and the clients. The credibility of the
research can be checked by the different responses gathered. It is a qualitative research by use of
sampling method. The data has been gathered from primary as well as secondary sources. The
survey is carried out or the survey and for secondary data the previously published reports and
journals have been used.
ANOVA is the qualitative data analysis tools which will be used in the study. The research is not
copied from anywhere and is the real work of the researcher.
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References
Chan, N. L., & Guillet, B. D. (2011). Investigation of social media marketing in Hong Kong
performs in marketing on social media websites? Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing
(28), 345-368.
Computer Economics. (2010, January). Social media adoption is low despite interest. Retrieved
from http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1519
Hoyer, W.D. & MacInnis, D.J. (2010). Consumer behavior. 5th edn. London: South Western
Cengage Learning.
Klapdor, S. (2013) Effectiveness of Online Marketing Campaigns: An Investigation into Online
Multichannel and Search Engine Advertising, 1st edn., Munich: Springer Gabler.
Lanz, L., Fischhof, B., & Lee, R. (2010). How are hotels embracing social media in 2010.
Retrieved from
http://hma.hotelworldasia.com/system/files/
Examples_of_How_Hotels_Are_Using_Social_Media_-_A_Guide_for_Getting_Started
%5B1%5D.pdf
Lovelock, C. and Wirtz, J. (2011). Services marketing: people, technology, strategy. 7th edn.,
New Jersey: Pearson.
Mckay, L. (2010). The hospitality suite. CRM Magazine, 14(9).
Scott, S., & Orlikowski, W. (2010). Reconfiguring relations of accountability: The consequences
of social media for the travel sector. Academy of Management Annual Meeting
Proceedings,1-6.
Smith, N. (2011). The perfect getway. New Media Age, 19-22.
Thevenot, G. (2007). Blogging as a social media. Tourism and Hospitality, 287-289.
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Xiang, Z., & Gretzel, U. (2010). Role of social media in online travel information search
Tourism Management, 31(2), 179-18.
Appendix
Research Plan (Gantt Chart)
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