Analysis: Social Media Marketing in Hospitality Industry Report

This report investigates the role of social media marketing within the Australian hospitality industry. It explores the growing importance of social media for enhancing brand reputation, driving customer engagement, and boosting sales in the digital era. The report covers the project objectives, scope, and a comprehensive literature review, examining the impact of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram on customer perceptions and hotel bookings. The research design includes qualitative and quantitative approaches, highlighting the limitations and outlining a time schedule. It addresses key research questions regarding social media’s influence on customer perception and its role as a branding tool, concluding with insights into effective marketing strategies for hospitality businesses. The report also considers the use of third-party booking platforms and customer reviews to improve online presence and brand trust.

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Project Objective.............................................................................................................................3
Project Scope...................................................................................................................................3
Literature review..............................................................................................................................4
Research Questions..........................................................................................................................7
Research Design and Methodology.................................................................................................8
Qualitative Approach...............................................................................................................................8
Quantitative Approach.............................................................................................................................9
Research Limitations.......................................................................................................................9
Time Schedule...............................................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
The purpose of writing this report is to study the role of social media marketing in the hospitality
industry in Australia. With the rapid growth of social media, the urge to need of understanding
their role in the hospitality industry has been proliferated and so their importance. Each and
every hospitality industry wants to increase their reputation throughout the world. The only
possible way that strikes the mind at the very first in this technological era is getting some place
in the social media websites. Near about 225 million users are hitting their profiles in a year, to
get connected with the people around the world, sharing their emotions, news articles, etc. Users
spend approx 65 percent of their time online searching the information collectively (Kumar,
2014). By posting the business related articles on the social media is like getting the buzz of
users. This helps the hospitality business to get more traffic or target audience to their website or
app which may lead to increase in conversion of sales. This strategy helps the hospitality
industry to provide their services online by giving them the interface to book or order their
services online, without wasting their time. Social media marketing has had a huge influence on
all business industries and different sectors. Social media marketing can be considered as an
effective sales medium or channel that provides a powerful and productive medium to grab
traffic in marketing (Cognizant, 2015).
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Project Objective
The objective of writing this report is to understand the role of social media marketing in the
hospital industry and to create a research report to address the gaps studied in the previous
literature review, understanding the primary and secondary research questions and method to
understand the feasibility of the research report. This report is also written to understand the
quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and to explore the research limitation and a
plan to improve the impact of social media marketing in the hospitality industry (Lim, 2010).
Other than this, the main objective of writing this research report is to evaluate and understand:
1. The role of social media marketing in the hospitality industry.
2. How it helps to develop long term business alliance with its customers?
3. How social media marketing helps in getting rating and reviews on the hospitality
industry websites?
4. How the promotional offers help in increasing the customer base of the hotels?
Project Scope
To communicate with the guests, hoteliers may make use of the messaging system provided by
the social media, which in turn can help in making the engagement with the customer, thereby
increasing the direct bookings. The continued growth of social media provides a real time
approach to promote the hotel industry by targeting the visitors and increase their customer base.
This customer base can be easily accessible via marketing about the industry on the social media
platforms. It has been observed that the social media websites like Facebook, Instagram,
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Snapchat, have more active users and those can easily be targeted. Thus, The scope of this
project is to understand the role of social media marketing and its impact on the hospitality
industry. Below is the report containing the daily active users on the social media websites.
(Quach,
2017)
Literature review
To increase the revenue and the client base, hospitality industries is making use of the social
media websites in trend. They are creating their profiles or ids and adding their hotel’s images,
events which are viewed by the active users on the social media websites like Facebook,
Instagram, Snapchat, etc. These active users may then be converted into the customers or clients
in the future. Hotels are also making business alliance with the third party brands like
booking.com, airbnb.com, to row their client base. These third party brand also help the
hospitality industries in making their online review better. The more the users can view the rating
and comments of the hotel, the more they will have the trust on the brand or hotel (Bennaciri,
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2012). This also helps the customer to know more about the hotel and the discounts hotel
industries are providing at their leisure or more convenient time, without actually visiting the
place.
In the year 2011, Chan and Guillet evaluated how the hospitality industry in Honk-Kong have
accessed the social media marketing. Chan and Guillet evaluated that the other hospitality
industries have been using the online blogs, social media websites, community websites and the
virtual worlds. Other than this, he has also analyzed that the hospitality industry experts has
proposed different online marketing plans ranging from integrating the major functional areas of
the hospitality industry (Chan & Guillet, 2011).
To evaluate the online public visibility of different hospitality industries in the social media
websites, Chan and Guillet in the year 2011 selected approximately 65 hotels who were actively
using the social media marketing strategies and analyzed their reputation in the different social
media platforms. They evaluated that hotel industries have been using approx 57 percent of
social media website, Twitter, and the 54 percent of Facebook to generate the leads of customers.
Hotel industries use the social media platforms to post the latest offered discounts.
In the year, 2007, Thevenot analyzed that 4 out of the 10 websites that provide the enjoyment or
entertainment to the viewers were the social blogs. He had also evaluated that online blogs are
much more popular than the magazines and can generate more customer base for the hotel
brands. He conducted an online survey, which resulted in approx 375 replies from the customers,
conveying the importance of social media marketing in the hospitality industry.
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The social media report in the year 2010 revealed that approx 45 per cent of the people who
responded to the survey were interested in the quality and products the hotel bands provide while
the 37 percent of the users believe in the ratings and reviewed on the social media websites.
The report of Nielsen’s 2011, demonstrated that approx 1.5 million people believe in the
marketing done by the hospitality industry using the social media rather than door to door
marketing. The process and outcomes of the hotels are more frequently adopted by the
customers.Further, the third party booking brands help the hospitality industries in improving
their online presence. Ricardo Freiré has been used as a witness to demonstrate the cost
effectiveness of using the blogging or third party brands in the marketing of the hotels.
Purchasing of package deals were much more beneficial than that of buying the flights and
hotels, which got viral on the social media website, YouTube (Inversini & Masiero, 2014).
The online active users share the posts on the best hotels and their reviews which help their
friends, colleagues in getting more knowledge about the particular hotel industry. The sharing of
the advices on social media helps in the marketing of the hospitality industry as well as help the
customers in selecting the hotels. Although, the majority of the global hospitality industries has
already adopted at least one social media website to boost the customer base. It has been
analyzed that approx 80 percent of the hospitality companies have been found registering to
those social media websites.
The hospitality industry has yet to recognize the benefits of using the social media marketing
websites such as low investments, direct clients, and brand reputation in the global market.
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It has been evaluated that the hospitality industry is considerably slow to get the benefits of these
high-end technologies, providing the best marketing strategies an organization can apply to
become a brand reputation.
Research Questions
We will evaluate this part by creating an aim to answer the questions differentiated in terms of
primary and secondary.
The primary question that this research report will answer is:
 What is the role of social media marketing in the hospitality industry?
The other questions which will be a part of secondary questions derived from the primary
question is:
 How does social media marketing impact the customer perception of the hospitality?
 How social media marketing act as a branding tool in the hospitality industry?
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Research Design and Methodology
To implement the research design and methodology, two approaches have been adapted to
extract the data from different sources. These are categorized as quantitative and qualitative. As
per the analysis, the research methodologies are divided in proportions are denoted as shown in
figure 3.
Qualitative Approach
Qualitative approach has been applied as its cheaper than other design and methodologies and
saves time during the research process. Also, it gives a transparency to the people doing research
by creating a clearer and right direction to them(Alzheimer Europe, 2013). The different sources
from which the data can be collected and are not limited to the books, articles, journals, websites,
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etc. These sources help us to understand the past events description, facts and what were the
problems and the issues. These sources also describe the interpretation of the pasts and what
would be its influence in the future (Shuttleworth, 2008).
The below table shows the example of collecting the information collected from various
databases.
Hospitality and Tourism Index (EBSCO) 10,162
Sage Journals Online 2,731
Emerald Insight 1052
Science Direct 183
Total 14128
Quantitative Approach
Quantitative approach is used by the researchers to collect and analyze the information by
performing the surveys, getting data via questionnaire, etc.Quantitative research generally based
on the hypothetical deduction and statistical analysis of the outcomes of the survey or the
questionnaire (Chu, 2014).
Research Limitations
Although this report includes the research on the role of social media marketing in the hospitality
industry and its literature review, still there are some research limitations which need to be
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considered. One major limitation in this research report was to study the ranking of the online
hospitality website and the design of that particular hospitality website. Since, it's difficult to
evaluate the design and ranking of each hospitality industry website, we have limited this
research report due to time constraint. Despite realizing the benefits from the internet sources
and social media marketing website, hospitality industries should not redirect their customers to
their websites as after looking into the non-user friendly website by the customers, it can put the
hospitality industries into a loss (Maxwell, 2017).
Time Schedule
This research required a lot of efforts calculated in terms of work as well as time. So, it was
important to create a time schedule beforehand to complete the research report on time
effectively and efficiently. Below is the sample Gantt chart which can be applied to create the
research report effectively.
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Conclusion
The primary aim of writing this research report is to give a brief of the main points on the role of
social media in the hospitality industry. This report includes the detailed literature review and
the objectives of writing this report. This report also contains the scope of the project and the
design and methodologies that have been carried out to prepare this report. This report also
comprises of the limitations of the research and the time schedule to better understand the
research. The main purpose of this proposal is to make the reader understand about the approach
selected to direct the research on the role of social media marketing in the hospitality industry.
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References
Alzheimer Europe, 2013. The four main approaches, Available at: http://www.alzheimer-
europe.org/Research/Understanding-dementia-research/Types-of-research/The-four-main-
approaches
Bennaciri, M., 2012. The effect of social media on hotel industry customer decisions, Available
at: http://www.nwmissouri.edu/library/theses/2012/BennaciriManal.pdf
Chan, N. & Guillet, B., 2011. Investigation of Social Media Marketing: How Does the Hotel
Industry in Hong Kong Perform in Marketing on Social Media Websites?, Available at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233178853_Investigation_of_Social_Media_Marketing
_How_Does_the_Hotel_Industry_in_Hong_Kong_Perform_in_Marketing_on_Social_Media_W
ebsites
Chu, Y., 2014. A review of studies on luxury hotels over the past two decades, Available at:
http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=4920&context=etd&bcsi_scan_64741547a7fe261b=k2LZWvPOf3Gj+3Tw8zpcG922R6e
dAAAAGt/7mg==&bcsi_scan_filename=viewcontent.cgi
Cognizant, 2015. The Social Media Mandate for the Hotel Industry, Available at:
https://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/the-social-media-mandate-for-the-hotel-
industry-codex1029.pdf
Inversini, A. & Masiero, L., 2014. The Use of Social Media and Online Travel Agents.
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 26(2), p. 272 – 292.
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Kumar, P., 2014. Role of Media in the Promotion of Tourism Industry. An Online International
Research Journal, 1(3), pp. 187-192.
Lim, W., 2010. The Effects of social media networks in the hospitality industry, Available at:
http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1694&context=thesesdissertations
Maxwell, T., 2017. Simplifying Digital Marketing For Hotels, Available
at:https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/06/01/simplifying-digital-marketing-
for-hotels/#6c86582a7b42
Quach, J., 2017. Social Media Marketing in the Hotel Industry: Trends and Opportunities in
2017, Available at: https://hvs.com/article/8049-social-media-marketing-in-the-hotel-industry-
trends-and-opportunities-in-2017
Shuttleworth, M., 2008. Different Research Methods, Available at:
https://explorable.com/different-research-methods
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