Roberta Minazzi

Social Media Marketing in Tourism and Hospitality

This book describes ongoing developments in social media within the tourism and hospitality sector, highlighting impacts on both the demand and the supply side. It offers a combination of theory and practice, with discussion of real-life business experiences. The book is divided into three parts, the first of which provides an overview of recent trends in social media and user-generated content, clarifies concepts that are often used in an overlapping way and examines the digitization of word of mouth via online networks. The second part analyzes the impacts that social media can have on traveler behavior for each step in the travel process and also on suppliers, highlighting opportunities, threats and strategies. In the third part of the book, future potential trends deriving from the mobile marketing technologies are explored and possible methods for social monitoring by means of key performance indicators are examined. It is considered how engaging customers and prospects by means of social media might increase customer loyalty, foster electronic word-of-mouth communication, and consequently have important effects on corporate sales and revenues. The discussion encompasses methods to measure company performance on each of the social media in order to understand the optimal mix that will support and improve business strategies.

The influence of e-word-of-mouth on hotel occupancy rate

Purpose Online consumer reviews have become increasingly important for consumer decision-making. One of the most prominent examples is the hotel industry where consumer reviews on websites, such as Bookings.com, TripAdvisor and Venere.com, play a critical role in consumers’ choice of a hotel. There have been a number of recent studies analyzing various aspects of online reviews. The purpose of this paper is to investigate their effects in terms of hotel occupancy rates. Design/methodology/approach This paper measures through regression analysis the impact of three dimensions of consumer reviews (i.e. review score, review variance and review volume) on the occupancy rates of 346 hotels located in Rome, isolating a number of other factors that might also affect demand. Findings Review score is the dimension with the highest impact. The results suggest that after controlling for other variables, a one-point increase in the review score is associated to an increase in the occupancy rate by 7.5 percentage points. Regardless the review score, the number of reviews has a positive effect, but with decreasing returns, implying that the higher the number of reviews, the lower the beneficial effect in terms of occupancy rates is. Practical implications The findings quantify the strong association of online reviews to occupancy rates suggesting the use of appropriate reputational management systems to increase hotel occupancy and therefore performance. Originality/value A major contribution of this paper is its comprehensiveness in analyzing the relation between online consumer reviews and occupancy across a heterogeneous sample of hotels.

The Digitization of Word-of-Mouth

From the first article published on the topic of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) research has rapidly increased, underlining the importance of this phenomenon in various business contexts. Customers’ purchasing behavior has increasingly changed with the development of Information and Communication Technologies and social media. Therefore, what had traditionally been defined as word-of-mouth (WOM) needs to be reconsidered and studied in light of recent trends. This chapter will analyze the evolution of the concept from WOM to eWOM and main dimensions for an analysis of WOM. Specific attention will be paid to credibility and possible biased information.

Mobile Technologies Effects on Travel Behaviours and Experiences: A Preliminary Analysis

The increased opportunity for tourists to be connected to the Internet during the trip, the development of social media, as well as advances in mobile technologies have profoundly affected travel experiences and behaviours. Travel stages (pre-trip, during-trip and post-trip) can overlap with a repositioning of some activities from the pre-trip and post-trip stages to the during-trip step. Therefore, the consumption of travel services becomes particularly important to be managed by travel operators, considering also the rapid progress of mobile tracking technologies. The present study explores the impacts of mobile technologies on travel experience with the purpose of understanding the most appropriate ways to interact with tourists. A qualitative research methodology was adopted to investigate how young adults employ mobile technologies in their travel experiences. The results of this pilot study will be the basis for identifying research questions to be tested in a subsequent research step.

Investigating Social Media Marketing in the Hospitality Industry: Facebook and European Hotels

Social media have changed the way people interact with each other and with companies. In fact, recent research confirms that user-generated content is a key element in the decision-making process of customers who travel. The hotel business is now taking advantage of the introduction of social media into their marketing programmes, trying to create a customized relationship with consumers. The aim of this study is to investigate the use of social media among European hotels. Quantitative and qualitative research methods have been combined to identify a group of items useful to comprehend how hotels interact with customers on social media. The results show that European hotels are still in the first stages of developing social media strategies that present a moderate level of integration among different media. They are considered a useful instrument to promote the hotel brand but the potentiality of customer engagement is still undervalued.

Mobile Social Media Marketing in Tourism

The combination of social media and mobile technologies has changed the way people communicate and influence all the steps of travel planning behavior. In particular, the convergence of social media, virtual reality, and physical space determines the development of a new perspective toward Mobile Social Media (MSM). This chapter will examine MSM concept and classifications, as well as possible applications in the tourism business. The last part of the chapter will discuss the actions travel organizations might undertake to exploit these mobile marketing applications.

Comunicazione e competizione, due elementi per un’integrazione del modello dei gap sulla qualità dei servizi

Obiettivo del paper : L’articolo offre un’analisi critica del modello dei Gap/SERVQUAL proposto da Parasuraman, Zeithaml e Berry alla fine degli anni Ottanta. Partendo dai contributi accademici esistenti, il lavoro analizza l’impatto di un approccio integrato dei flussi di comunicazione e delle dinamiche competitive sul modello dei Gap, superandone la visione prevalentemente introspettiva e considerando le possibili relazioni interne ed esterne. Metodologia : Lo studio dell’evoluzione e delle criticita del modello dei Gap si fonda su una revisione della letteratura dal 1985 al 2011 effettuata tramite le principali banche dati internazionali e integrata da contributi della Scuola Italiana. Risultati : Lo studio offre un contributo all’integrazione del modello dei Gap, considerando in misura piu ampia ed esplicita i fattori comunicazionali e competitivi e suggerendo alcune riflessioni per una eventuale successiva integrazione del modello SERVQUAL. Limiti della ricerca : Lo studio considera i contributi di carattere teorico-pratico che permettono di comprendere l’evoluzione del modello e gli eventuali limiti e criticita. Sono state escluse le pubblicazioni puramente applicative. Trattandosi di un conceptual-paper, il lavoro presenta i tipici limiti di tale approccio. Implicazioni pratiche : Rileggere il modello dei Gap in chiave piu attuale, alla luce delle nuove tendenze del marketing e dei due elementi comunicazione e competizione. Si tratta di un primo step per sviluppare un nuovo modello fondato su una logica sistemica e caratterizzato da relazioni e interazioni di tipo circolare e biunivoco. Originalita del lavoro : Superare l’interpretazione del giudizio di qualita come mero divario fra aspettative e percezioni della clientela, comprendendone invece la natura dinamica e relativa e le complesse interazioni con l’ambiente circostante. Parole chiave: qualita; servizi; SERVQUAL; gap; comunicazione; competizione

Social Media Metrics and Analysis

Information Technology progress and Social media spread, as well as Mobile Social Media development, examined in previous Chapters, contribute to the increasing availability of a large amount of multimedia structured and unstructured content about customers and prospects (called “Big data”). Travel organizations able to gather, analyze, and interpret this information have the opportunity to enhance customers’ knowledge, and consequently, to improve service differentiation and personalization. The synchronization with various target markets allows creating a competitive advantage and increasing financial and operational performance. Therefore, a key issue turns out to be the definition of the most appropriate social media metrics able to evaluate social media performance and, if combined with other measures, to support and improve business strategies.

Social Media Impacts on Travelers

This chapter examines the impact social media can have on travelers’ behavior, through the integration of decision-making studies and travel planning theories. Influences of social media are analyzed for each step of the travel planning process: before leaving (pre-trip), during the stay (during-trip), and after having come back home (post-trip). The second part of the chapter focuses on travel experience sharing activity. In particular, reasons for sharing, dimensions of co-creation, and main mediators of travel experience are examined. Finally, demographics and various roles of social media users (lurkers, posters, and shoppers) are discussed.

Social Media Impacts on Travel Suppliers: Social Media Marketing

In the light of social media impacts on travelers’ behavior earlier analyzed in Chap. 3, this section highlights the effects on travel suppliers. In particular, traditional ways to create customer relationships need to be integrated with new eCRM practices and communication policies. Travel companies able to engage customers and prospects by means of social media can increase word-of-mouth, enhance their web reputation, and eventually influence purchase behaviors. Some examples are provided and discussed.