Technology and Social Media's Impact on the Hotel Industry: A Report

This report examines the profound impact of technology and social media on the hotel industry, highlighting its role in shaping consumer behavior and operational strategies. The report explores the challenges hoteliers face in keeping up with technological trends, including the need for interoperability, data security, and responsiveness to customer demands. It reviews relevant literature to understand the shift in consumer expectations and the use of social media for information and communication. The study identifies the key issues and presents a thematic table summarizing the challenges and their corresponding authors. Recommendations are provided, emphasizing the importance of aligning technology with client needs, ensuring interoperability, and maintaining robust security measures. The report concludes that awareness of the benefits and challenges of technology adoption is essential for informed management and sustainable development in the hospitality sector. This report is a valuable resource for students seeking to understand the evolving digital landscape of the hotel industry.

Running head: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA 1
Technology and Social Media as a Contemporary Issue in Hotel Industry
Name
Institution

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA 2
Technology and Social Media as a Contemporary Issue in Hotel Industry
Introduction
Currently, investors and hoteliers are increasingly becoming aware of how the
environment and social life impacts hotel operations and development. Various factors have
contributed to the awareness of investors and hoteliers including their desire to lower the
costs of services, create sustainable development, management adaptability to growth and
changes in processes and changing the attitude of investors towards the environment. More
so, investors and hoteliers face the difficulty of sustainability due to the dynamic nature of the
hostel industry business environment.
Statement of the Problem
Technology and the internet are playing a significant role in creating value and
competitiveness in the hotel industry. Customers have become aware of luxuries available,
and hence, they demand more from hotels who must keep up with these standards. Hotels
face challenges in keeping up with technology and internet trends which shape consumer
expectations of services. Therefore research on how technology has affected the hotel
industry is critical to recommend for future sustainable development and operations.
Objective
i. Find out how technology and social media has affected the hotel industry.
ii. Give recommendations based on the literature findings.
Literature Review
Technology and social media are one of the major contemporary issues facing the
hotel business. Experts in hotel industry argue that there is a need for hotels to keep up with
technology trends for sustained growth (Kansakar, Munir, and Shabani, 2019). The
improvements target a new generation of technophile whose travel is based on a tight budget
for the sheer thrill. The group represents more than 50 percent of all travelers. Most young

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generation travelers have attributes like traveling a lot, early adoption of technologies, prefer
personalized interactions, and are spontaneous. Also, observed that the majority of guests
today are tech-savvy travelers who prefer using the internet to make communications and
connections (Quach 2017). The number of mobile users has been increasing exponentially
from 4.8 billion in 2016 and expected to grow to 5.7 billion by 2020. Therefore, investors and
hoteliers have a role in making sure their offerings are up-to-date and user-friendly. Modern
travelers hope hospitality facilities to offer quality equipment and expect then to have
knowledgeable staff.
According to Varkaris and Neuhofer (2017), hotel decision-making has dramatically
changed in this age of internet and social media. Consumers and hoteliers no longer depend
on brochures and travel agencies to reach out to get information and reach out to the
consumers, respectively. The reason being, Google, Facebook, MySpace, Trip Advisor, and
more are now used for such purposes as advertising, informing, and disseminating
information. Social media is being used as a primary channel for information search together
with other search engines.
However, workforce compatibility is a common challenge in adopting social media.
Though the use of social media may be straightforward to handle when compared to other
websites, it poses a challenge to hotel operators to make communication (Hofacker and
Belanche, 2016). The reason being, language proficiency has become a barrier when creating
content for use by the public. Also, hoteliers face financial issues in deciding to invest in
technology. Managers are sometimes hesitant to spend more on acquiring new technologies
since they may see social media networking as not necessary and significant. Therefore, some
hotels end up not investing in social networking and hence lose the advantages that come
with it.
Additionally, the hospitality industry is challenged by the implementation and

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integration of technologies to its functions (Popov, Blinova, Kosheleva, Valedinskaya, and
Mikhaylets, 2017). One of these challenges is interoperability. There is no standardization in
the hotel industry. Hotels are developing their own systems solutions based on their metrics
and methodologies in so far as they can achieve technology needs by their guests. As a result,
there are many implementations targeted to solve similar service problems. These systems
may work in a particular case scenario, but they cannot be extended to have secure sharing
capabilities between organizations due to lack of centralization and decentralization of data.
Another challenge is the security and privacy of clients’ data. Hotel ICT systems
gather sensitive information from guests, including preferences, behavior, and location.
Therefore, it is the responsibility of managers to store and protect these data not to expose
visitors to physical, economic, and societal threats (Magalhães, de Magalhães, Revett, and
Jahankhani, 2017). The system should ensure the security of visitors during and after
interactions through robust security implementations that prevent data leaks and theft. Other
security primitives should be implemented with the hotel management and information
system. A secure system keeps hackers at bay and from injecting malicious programs and
codes that threat clients’ security and privacy.
Moreover, the hotel industry is required to have prompt request and delivery of
services to clients. Hotels achieve this by implementing a system that integrates interaction
between the guest and the hotel service provider. The system can further be implemented to
include automatic guest control, which needs little no human interaction and intervention
(Cho, Bonn, Susskind, and Giunipero, 2018). With such a system, there is minimized
miscommunications and confusions in request processing. Therefore, the use of robust
systems by hotel service providers make the processing of requests faster than when a human
is involved. In essence, responsiveness is critical to valuable client service and seamless
experience. Also, responsiveness is essential in maintaining the hotel. As such, a slow system

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hampers the processes and hence lower revenues.
services in Present Research
The identified research gap is the challenges of technologies and social media adoption and
utilization in the hotel industry in Australia.
Thematic Table
Issues Authors Reason
Keeping up with technology
trends
Kansakar, P., Munir, A., &
Shabani, N.
The Hotel industry
environment is changing, and
technologies and clients are
dynamic.
Keeping up with social
networking
Quach J. Using social media to reach
out to customers. Increase in
the number of connected
customers.
Effect of social media on
customers behavior
Varkaris, E., & Neuhofer, B. Broader accessibility of
information.
Adoption and compatibility
issues of internet
communication
Hofacker, C. F., & Belanche,
D.
Language barrier in public
arena. Ignorance due to
financial costs.
Poor implementation and
integration of IoT systems in
hotels
Popov, L. A., Blinova, E. A.,
Kosheleva, A. I.,
Valedinskaya, E. N., &
Mikhaylets, A. V.
Lack of interoperability
Security and privacy issues
with technologies systems
Magalhães, M. J., de
Magalhães, S. T., Revett, K.,
Require end to end security
maintenance. Expensive to

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA 6
& Jahankhani, H. sustain and have up to date
systems.
Responsiveness Cho, M., Bonn, M. A.,
Susskind, A., & Giunipero,
L.
Maintaining a responsive
system is expensive to the
hoteliers. They have no
option but to adopt them to
be competitive.
Recommendation
It is notable that though most companies are implementing technologies in hotel
services. As such, hotel service providers should ensure that the techniques adopted to align
with the client needs and expectations. Hoteliers can learn about their prospective clients in
social media, which has widely been attributed to changing hotel consumer behavior. Before
and during the implementation of systems, hotelier should source for those systems that allow
interoperability. Most importantly, in system development, developers should have set
standards and metric that is suitable for all hotel operators so that inter and intra-organization
would be possible. A sound system that has been developed for use by hoteliers in the
industry is likely to have a dedicated vendor. The vendor is responsible for security privacy of
the client data, frequent update to close security loopholes and hence create trust between the
vendor, hotel providers, and guests. Also, a system with a dedicated vendor is well developed
and updated to fit the current needs in the industry.
Conclusion
The digital way of life adopted by modern consumers have forced hotel service
providers to accelerate the adoption of digital technologies. While there is a range of skills
that required for successful sustainable development and operations of a hospitality business,

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA 7
it can be concluded that awareness of the benefits and challenges that come with the
implementation of technologies is essential for informed management and the trade-off
between cost and benefits.

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References
Cho, M., Bonn, M. A., Susskind, A., & Giunipero, L. (2018). Restaurant
dependence/autonomy in the supply chain and market responsiveness: The
moderating roles of information technology adoption and trust. International Journal
of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 30(9), 2945-2964.
Quach, J. (2017). Social Media Marketing in the Hotel Industry: Trends and Opportunities in
2017, Hospitality Net. Retrieved from
https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4083877.html
Hofacker, C. F., & Belanche, D. (2016). Eight social media challenges for marketing
managers. Spanish Journal of Marketing-ESIC, 20(2), 73-80.
Kansakar, P., Munir, A., & Shabani, N. (2019). Technology in the Hospitality Industry:
Prospects and Challenges. IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, 8(3), 60-65.
Magalhães, M. J., de Magalhães, S. T., Revett, K., & Jahankhani, H. (2017, January). A
review on privacy issues in hotels: a contribution to the definition of information
security policies and marketing strategies. In International Conference on Global
Security, Safety, and Sustainability (pp. 205-217). Springer, Cham.
Popov, L. A., Blinova, E. A., Kosheleva, A. I., Valedinskaya, E. N., & Mikhaylets, A. V.
(2017). Contemporary Challenges of Independent Hotels Automation on the Way to
Achieving Competitiveness: Focus on the Hotel Services Market of the Black Sea
Coast. Eurasian Journal of Analytical Chemistry, 12(7b), 1415-1420.
Varkaris, E., & Neuhofer, B. (2017). The influence of social media on the consumers’ hotel
decision journey. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 8(1), 101-118.