Social Media in Tourism Industry - Literature review Example

SOCIAL MEDIA IN TOURISM INDUSTRY By Location Social Media in Tourism Industry Social media is the ideal strategy for the tourism industry. It plays a fundamental responsibility in every aspect of the travel and tourism sector. The uploading done on social media constitutes t 53% of what travellers experienced as well as others comments. As a result, this process feed into the desires of people up and close to the social media (Liping, Szilvia & Munar, 2013, p. 78). The impact of this is the never-ending ‘e-word of mouth’. The use of social media marketing strategies has received a lot of concern by stakeholders in order to achieve maximum results on tourism as a brand. One of the reasons for the success of marketing of tourism industry of social media is the application of strategies like strategy development, the perfect tools set-up, daily management of the brand, and brand monitoring. Social media means range from Facebook, twitter, pinterest, Linkedln, Foursquare, Google, and instagram to mention but a few (Ritchie, Goeldner, 2009, p.60). All these means have helped to provide interesting news, photos, updates, and facts about tourism in many parts of the world. Social media has become an essential fraction of tourism marketing; it has modernized the industry to big thing around the world of business. In order to maintain a mainstream flow of tourists for tourism, customer management is as crucial as the brand itself. There are those who go for good concocting slogans for their tourism marketing on social media (Milano, Baggio & Piattelli, 2011, p. 66). This may not be the bait for all, like the failed slogan of Tourism Australia (T.A). Making good use of social media through creating a valuable information platform, where customers can turn to for information, would come as a blessing in customer management. Take the case of New Zealand, they have a YouTube Channel, and this helps tourist across the globe to plan their trips well. This is a great idea of customer management in this country. In addition, promoting social media presence can act as a way of managing potential tourists in the tourism industry (Dwivedi, Yadav & Venkatesh, 2012, p. 90). This is a way through which social media extent, this great opportunity for organizations to become part of consumers’ daily living. An alternative would be for one to go the Chicago way ‘Explore Chicago Section’ through the use of their Foursquare in Checking Tourists in their sites (Baggio, 2011, p. 54). Through this way, one gets a boost through promoting the popular and less popular tourist attraction sites in his region. The role of social media in modern marketing is not something to pass unnoticed. Those in tourism industry know how significant it is for their brand. As a long standing proverbial, the word of mouth remains as the ancient means, a powerful tool of marketing (Ayeh et al 2012, p. 142). Nevertheless, in the present generation, social media has outgrown to become the today’s word of mouth. Online marketing of tourism helps getting people to connect with the tourists site personnel and this does more than to help spread the about the tourism brands and the services. Therefore, social media remains as the pivot and the real power to get intact with consumers. As a tourist’s marketer, connecting with one’s current consumers becomes one of the most powerful ways to increase tourism business online or out of air (Schegg et al 2008, p. 201). This is because the current consumers possess the social media power to persuade one’s target audience to check in, in one’s tourism industry. If any marketer can manage to get the existing consumers to comment on the tourism brand one has, becomes a great advantage to one’s advertising (Heintzman, 2012, p. 72). The mounting of positive comments from one’s existing consumers on any social media, adds to a powerful real personal testimonial and this influences others to join in as the current and willing consumers. This is something the word of mouth, even though a powerful tool, cannot manage given the vastness created by the social media. As an advantage over word of mouth, social media represents the low-cost tools make use of technology and connect with social interaction with the use of words. Therefore, using social media gives marketers a voice and a means to communicate with consumers, peers, and even potential consumers in a mass, unlike the word of mouth (Ayeh et al 2012, p. 128). The biggest achievement of social sites is that it personalizes the brand one deals with and this helps spread the message in an easy and fast way. Being consistent in the use of social media for marketing, one creates a personality, a tool for communication that makes one accessible to those interested in his brand as well as those in darkness about what the brand offers. Therefore, one gets an assurance of repeat of buyers and customer loyalty, a reason why many countries like Australia and Kenya have benefitted from their successful marketing of their brand. As a business like any other, the tourism industry faces some challenges when trying to use social media in the attempt to promote their brand. To generate revenue and earn customer loyalty through social media can prove as an unattainable option due to the unprecedented challenges that come with it. One of the challenges is how to design websites, which would automatically initiate conversions. In the current market trends in marketing, more than 80% of the consumers have turned into judging the quality of a given brand by its online. As a tourism brand marketer, unable to create a selling slogan through one website deems one’s business a failure. The critical marketing aspect, especially for the offers of tourism, which are not transferable, requires a well-designed website (Heintzman, 2012, p. 54). Therefore, if one manages a perfectly crafted website, generally the social media would do the perfect marketing for his brand. Moreover, tourism marketers using social media have faced the challenge of creating content that would turn out to appeal to both one’s target audiences as well as search engines. Many marketers of social media feel that creating that content on one’s social site consumes a lot of time. In trying to mitigate this challenge, many marketing frontiers turn to content marketing team of professionals, who in response create the appropriate and marketable content for one to place in his website. It becomes an uphill task for beginners who intend their product to appeal to current and willing consumers (Wood et al 2013, p. 84). This definitely affects the sale of the brand for many consumers in the current digital world would heavily rely on the online content in order to pursue their area of interest. As a result, if one’s information about the brand he is offering to potential consumers receives ineffective documentation online, this makes the consumers have a low opinion and thus loyalty and the attraction power are lost (Munar, 2012, p. 66). Even though those in the tourism sector have learned about how to rely on content marketing teams to ensure, a well designed content to receive much attention from their target consumers and the search engine algorithms. In today’s vast developed world through technology, marketing, tourism requires wide and far-reaching methods to transmit its variety of brands. It requires one to develop a well-detailed analysis of his brand and make use of the varieties sources of social media. Many tourism marketers have faced a big challenge in initiating such measures (Hvass & Munar, 2012, p. 82). Another challenge has been on how best the promoters of tourism, through social media, can increase customer engagement. The presence of an active online website for the promotion of tourism in today’s world makes it easy to market the brand to a large audience through different sites. One of the ways these promoters have had a challenge in increasing their customer engagement is how to become more mobile and friendly. The promoters thus have continued to struggle to catch up with potential customers who keep changing their medium, to the current access of internet through mobile devices. Close to 1.7 billion of literate people across the globe, rotate along with their mobile gadget. This means the promoters have no alternative rather than two channels their contents of their brand to sites of social interaction like twitter, Facebook, and other current sites (Munar, 2012, p. 75). This is the changing trends as the business world is day in day out being treated to new waves of change in the industry. Embracing mobile friendly means would needs of the potential customers. Therefore, it is clear that if the promoters of tourism industry are to benefit from the overwhelming consumers all over the globe, they ought to make a perfect use of the available social media sites (Hvass & Munar, 2012, p. 75). They not only need to post their content, but also to keep in touch and create a personality that the consumers can identify all along.definitely anchor the tourism industry to become more friendly and versatile to the developing. These challenges have negatively influenced hospitality and tourism industry at large. One of the realities of that lack of an effective marketing procedure result directly to low response to consumers of tourism industry brands and services. With these real life challenges in place, tourism business faces every day the competitive edge to attract an unending stream of loyal consumers. The challenges deny the promoters the chances to be consistent for the lapses in the way content is updated on the social sites largely influence the consumers of one brand versus another (Munar, Gyimóthy & CAI, 2013, p. 103). This vacuum ensures lack of direct interaction with potential consumers as one cannot provide quick interaction that the consumer probably had requested. The challenges also have denied promoters of tourism sector a chance to establish the real consumers of their brand. For consumers to follow one on a certain social site, one does not merely look to answer the questions posted, but also crave to build a personality that consumers would love to hang on for a little longer (Goeldner & Ritchie, 2009, p.120). With lack of an established website, for example, or any other feasible social media site, the promoters also have ended up creating feeble relationships with people who might have known their new brand or services or what that sector stands for in their offer. This means that such connections are elusive hence the acquisition of potential consumers’ remains a pipe dream contrary to many. In order to maximize the future ways of promoting the tourism industry, one cannot just keep napping with the ever-changing dispensation of technology, as a way of communication is evolving (Munar, Gyimóthy & CAI, 2013, p. 92). One has to keep abreast with these trends in order to retain the flow of his consumers. This would require potential promoters to embrace the challenge and place their tourism content well in personalized website. This would ensure that one’s brand is up there competing with the best in the world (Liping, Szilvia & Munar, 2013, p. 121). On another position, one cannot entirely depend on the social media, for the overall promotion of tourism in the future. Integrating the social medium means with other vehicles of marketing would greatly help promote the industry in an event where these technological challenges seem technical. The building of the social media stardom through personal websites, coupled with other divergent measures of marketing to complement these would directly assist enough to put the tourism brand to many willing, loyal consumers. 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