TOURISM

Tourism and Social Media

Tourism and Social Media

Web 2.0

It's an efficient means of technology that elaborates on the use of web sites for not only providing static information but also facilitates users to interact with each other and contribute by posting or sharing their generated contents in a simulated community or web site as compare to those web sites that only allow users to view the content made by the web owner. Examples of web 2.0 marketing strategies include blogs, wikis, YouTube, social networking sites, web applications, folksonomy (creating and managing tags to classify content), and social bookmark. It is a means of provision of a platform where more user interface is possible.

Role of Social Media in Tourism

Social media is a platform used by people where they interact and exchange information, which is created by several users. It is a combination of Internet related activities and applications, which are outcomes of web 2.0 ideologies and technologies. It facilitates human communication networks. It is considered as a powerful tool of spreading news and information via social media tools like Facebook and Twitter etc. It has played a vital role in the marketing of Tourism industry. It facilitates companies to directly communicate with customers and evaluate their opinions and preferences regarding services and packages that companies offer. Social media provides various tools to tourism companies with which they can market their services at a very cheap cost and obtain effective results. Such as, Facebook pages created by various tourism companies provides latest information about their services and packages to customers. In addition, these companies can share photos and videos of foreign areas via YouTube, Flicker, Facebook etc. Blogs also allow these companies to write and interact with clients about their latest services or recent customers' experiences. These tools are very effective in terms of controlling expenses of media ads on TV or print media, less employees can manage tons of workload, company can easily approach its target audience and many more (Hvass. A. K. & Munar. M. A., 2012, p. 93-96). Below are the examples of promotions of destinations by means of Facebook and blogs.



Literature review of Destination Marketing and Distribution

Destination can be explained as a geographical location elected by a tourists, which must have facilities regarding lodging, boarding and amusement. The role of destination plays a vital role in inbound travel, which should be managed strategically (Thomas. B., 2008, pp. 63). According to the defined definition, the total experience of tourism is dependent on place, location and the product of tourism. Destination competiveness is dependent on its ability to attract tourists by increasing expenditure on offering better tourism services and memorable experiences and also preserving the natural capital for future destination (Mazanec. J. A., 2006).

According to the theory of social presence suggests that the greater the existence of social presence, greater will be the affect of online marketing on people's behaviours and preferences. Social presence represents media richness and theory of media richness aims that effective communication is achieved as a result ...