Social Media and Its Impact on the Tourism Industry - Essay Example

Social Media and its Impacts on the Tourism Industry Affiliation Social Media and its Impact on the Tourism Industry The internet is among the few things that have fundamentally reshaped the tourism sector. Buhalis & Law (2008) agrees that the information about tourism on the internet has a lot of impact on how people plan or consume travel. Changes in the internet consumption today are said to be important factors in determining the future of tourism as any other hospitality industry. While the internet itself is a wide engine, looking at the specifics in it someone would notice social media Websites that clearly have the largest say when it comes to information dissemination. Social media websites represent forms such as blogs (referred to as consumer-generated content (CGC)), social networks such as Facebook, twitter and so on, wikis, video and media files sharing sites mostly YouTube and Flickr, and also collaborative sites have definitely gained a lot of popularity amongst today’s internet users (Yoo et al, 2009). This paper will expound on social media and how it is influencing the tourism sector. In addition, the paper will outline a number of impacts that the social media platforms have on the future of the industry and how it affects marketing and service strategies. It is crucial that the definition of some terms is made. Tourism itself is not a difficult topic to ponder. It entails the movement of people from one place to another mostly for leisure and pleasure. That is, a visit to a place far from home that does not entail any making of money is a tourism expedition. While it is possible to spend as much time as possible in the country or region of visit, staying over a period of 12 months is not considered tourism, the person becomes a local. On the other hand, social media, according to the Merriam-Webster, is said to be the forms of electronic communication such as websites for microblogging and social networking where the users of the sites create communities on the web for sharing of information, personal messages, ideas, and any other content (for instance videos and music). For the past several years, social media has undoubtedly had the most exponential growth in the world today. Data shows that in September 2005, there were only 16% of all the internet users aged between 18 and 29 that were social networking-site users. Less than 5 years later, this number had grown to a whopping 86%. Also, data on internet users aged between 30-49, those age between 50-64, and lastly those aged above 65 had their social networking-site use rise from 12 to 61, 7 to 47, and 5 to 26 per cent, respectively (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010) With the need to have more and more friends yet it is becoming trickier to maintain face-to-face interaction, different social networking tools have come to offer different services concerning what kind of a relationship a person needs to retain with their friends. In social networking, people can create profiles and develop communities based on people they are willing to share their information with. One of the most influential and ever-growing social networking site today is Facebook. Here any person can join and be a member, they can therefore create their own profiles, join or form groups. Such groups can be either “closed” or “open” and are almost the fastest ways members can communicate with each other. Each day, a lot of people log in to their Facebook profiles to check on the News Feed, comment on statuses, update their own, make friends, follow links, discuss trending topics, consult friends, and so on. Since a lot of time is spent on Facebook now than almost all other sites, industries have seen the potential the site has on marketing of products and have thus made use the opportunity to boost sales and more so boost their reach to ‘fans’. On Facebook, a certain tourist agency can create a page, and then the aforementioned fans can ‘like’ the page and always have the chance to read the agency’s updates whenever they have one. This has proved very effective in advertising as the update may contain offers where the fan would comment on and all their friends would see “this and that likes this and that agency” and can also follow up on that and like it themselves or comment. At the end of the day, the information reaches many people through that chain becoming an indomitable force that most product manufactures and service providers cannot wait to harness. What makes Facebook powerful is that the customer relationship and engagement with any agency out there eventually turns them into fans, providing the fastest and almost the most convenient reach to consumers. If there were a certain forum that the ‘fan’ likes a lot, in relation to how much information the page offers them information on tourism, the individual would more likely visit the page more regularly. Apart from that, the fan would be compelled to ‘share’ their relationship with the page on their walls or alternatively ‘tag’ friends on such news feeds and then attract more fans to the page. If the page would advertise a product, then there would be a very high likelihood that people buy it, or at least refer their friends. With such a tool, marketing is definitely evolved to a completely new level. It is the same avenue tourism industry forums are used to reach out to consumers. To say the least, how to properly engage customers in regard to a product is what most sellers are working on doing today. For instance, a forum develops good rapport with consumers. The customers cultivate a level of “intimacy” with the brand. They will go on to refer to their friends by word of mouth, social networking, blogs, and comments on websites and so on. Additionally, the customer may offer some value addition through by providing user generated content. Undoubtedly, such a positive social experience on the internet brings about more loyal customers to any given brand. Other social networking sites are equally important. YouTube, for instance, offers a chance where people, just like in Facebook, can join and be members. The main difference between the two is that in YouTube, what happens mostly is that people upload their own videos in the site. This way, other people can watch the videos and ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ them. Moreover, they can subscribe to the channels they think offer the most tailored information according to what the viewer in question needs. Tourism brands and agencies are thus taking the opportunity to create their own channels showcasing their tourist destination and campaigning for more views and ‘thumbs up’ on the site so that more people would be lured to come and watch the uploaded videos. Brands can also pay other channels to advertise for them in which case the brand’s video is featured before the video a person clicks to view and has to watch the advert until the allocated ‘airtime’ elapses. The method proves to be very efficient in advertising and more brands are really buying it. Facebook is a little favoured because it offers travel brands a chance to identify prospective travellers, connect to the users directly, and engage with advocates so we to create a branded experience through the myriad advertisements and the common custom-developed Facebook apps. The platform’s ability to create awareness, trigger real-time conversations, its flexibility, and advocacy techniques all work in pushing consumers to making travel purchases. Initially, a good marketing strategy would have been printing advertisements on newspapers, magazines, flyers, pamphlets, and billboards, buy airtime on television or radio and so on. Today, this has since changed. People need more specialized information. Since cell phones are becoming more and more sophisticated and now have the internet, people need information on the gadget they use regularly. The radio and the television are not used as much as they were used sometime back. Today, people are even using newspaper apps right from their mobile phones. This means that the best way to have products reach your customers is to have the information right in the gadgets they use most, or rather the platforms they use most, social media to be precise as it provides more sophisticated, handy and personalized information. While there is a lot that can be said in regard to the advantages social media has in boosting sales in the tourism industry while compared to other traditional forms of advertisement, it is understood that challenges are also facing social media. Looking at Facebook, for example, many people do not find the ads appealing. Most people think that while Facebook’s initial reason for its inception may have been to help people connect, the site is crammed with ads and there is lesser and lesser screen real estate being left for interaction with other people, except with the marketers of course. Today, login into a Facebook account, the most noticeable things that the user sees is ads, something that is irritating for a social networking site. These sites require that a user enter as much of their personal information as possible since the data is said to help Facebook offer services that will best match the users’ preference. The recent deal between Facebook and ,MasterCard has raffled some feathers in that Facebook is selling their user information to third parties all for the same reason, tailoring ads to the user’s needs. While there are those who would see this as a good thing, the fact is that whoever benefits is not the consumer, but the brands in question. Facebook will continually have more brands buy personal profiles of users and therefore drive their sales high but this information may finally reach malicious hands. The above issue, in conclusion, is one that most people may be forced to turn their backs on social media as they feel their privacy and fundamental human rights are being infringed. Some may call this paranoia but the truth is very few people want their whereabouts known by the NSI. How the information will reach the NSI is simple, if Facebook and all other social networking sites do not guide the personal information, which is actually a second part of our lives, then people are at risk of exploitation. There is no one who would want to have the power to know what every person likes, hates, befriends, is doing, is planning to do, and every other information more than the NSI and of course the tourism industry. The fact that the social media are also “insulting” their ability to reach people by having more and more advertisements on them each day is also another life changing fact. Social medial is supposed to be an avenue where people share and connect. More ads will only ruin the whole idea and sooner than later, people will stop using them as much as they used to. The tourism industry, like most other industries, will have no choice but in the end look for other means of reaching more people through ads. References Buhalis, D., & Law, R. (2008). Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research. Tourism management, 29(4), 609-623. Webster, M. (2006). Merriam-Webster online dictionary. Xiang, Z., & Gretzel, U. (2010). Role of social media in online travel information search. Tourism management, 31(2), 179-188. Yoo, K. H., Lee, Y., Gretzel, U., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2009, January). Trust in Travel-related Consumer Generated Media. In ENTER (pp. 49-59). Read More