Critically Evaluate The Use Of Social Media In A Hospitality Business

Background of the Hotel

The major reason to this research is giving an overview of the scope by providing the readers with a good outline in relation to the paper. The research begins by discussing the background, research problems, objectives of the study and the associated questions to be researched. The boundary is also subjected which in this case is hotel case study. In conclusion, an outline of the research study will be presented.

In the current world, people are living in the real time age of info & communications as it spreads globally. In June 2010, about 30% of earth population were using internet (WorldStats, 2011). Internet users have become more connected than it ever happened there before. Through the engagement and interaction with the info channels and the use of social virtual medias and communities many people have been brought together in one platform. The vast development of such media platforms such as the Google, Use of Facebook, website that has Video-sharing features like YouTube, Blogs and articles as well as micro-blogs platforms such as the Twitter. The mentioned platforms have created efficient evidences, where in consideration they have changed channels of communication and the virtuality of the social life.

According to the BF (Brand-Finance), which is the world known detailed body in performing survey for brand values has ranked Google to be the most Valuable brand across and over all major markets (BF, 2011). Google, domination in the website information in the search engine sectors, is very much valuable in the manner in that it is worth $44.3 billion followed by Microsoft Edge with about $42.8 billion. Brand Finance Report has shown that people have increased their dependency on the internet which has been evident by Google being No 1. Facebook has over 1 billion users who are active and thus it has become the most used and famous social networking social media platforms (Facebook, 2011) which is about almost a quarter of the world population.

In the current economy of globe, there has been vast growth and tourism diversifying for some years as it has become a phenomenon globally and thus affecting the economy nation significantly (UNWTO, 2010). In the activities of tourism, the destination of tourism is very crucial and termed as fundamental element tourism occurrence.  Marketing and their strategies as well as the ways through which they are implemented have been termed as backbones of destination activities (YourSingapores, 2011). If Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) was to be applied s many will take the advantage of the ICT and thus help in social media development in marketing in all the destinations as the distinctive strategies in marketing online.

Tourism Organization board and Europeans Travels Commissions (2008) showed that the purposes and strategies of the online marketing was exploiting the internet and the associated forms of the digital communication in corresponding to the market targeted in a way that is very effective. Internet is one of the platforms which has helped in increasing the means and channels of promotions as well as distribution of tourism services. In this case of tourism, the DOMs platforms have been created through ways such as websites being linked where customers/viewers and visitor’s ca be able to access information and purchase and make order of numerous mechanisms in a given outing when online (McColes, 2001). Marketing online has been termed to be a relative new-fangled aspect of strategic enactment which have expanded speedily and thus becoming very significant. Marketing online may be put in to considerations to be one of the aspects of operational and functional aspects of strategies in marketing (Pearson, 2010). Marketing Online has offered Destination Marketing Organization (DMOs) a potential that is so real in reaching the far away audience than it used to be there before (Kester, 2008).

Problem Statement

The inception of social media is still one due to the constant evolution that has been witnessed and seen each and very minute because of the development of the internet and information technologies. Social media has been categorized and considered to be one of the best channels of communication. However, internet and social media has greatly influenced people in many ways. Nevertheless, for a company to use the anticipated social media, they may need to have a plan and defines their distinctive strategies.

According to Altimeter Group Report in 2009, company was deeply engaged in different channels of social media, revenue of growth by over 18% for the last few years while those companies that were engaged least had a drop in the average by having about 6% of total revenue for over the same period (Cucx, 2009).  In the environment of academic, there have been less research done and the demonstration practical of online marketing as well as the studies of social-media in the industry of tourism in general and the marking destinations administration in specific.

This study has used the case study of VisitSingapore, which is the Singapore National Marketing Body for tourism, which is owned almost equally by the government of Singapore via the existing enterprises, Energy and communications ministries as well as the tourism industry of Singapore. VisitSingapore has been able to identify the marketing assignments by putting a lot of focus on marketing international the Singapore brands and the destinations as well as the experiences of Singapore.

There are other Destinations Marketing Organizations who has not made in any effort in integration of digital marketing in their businesses but VisitSingapore has made a greater effort in integrating the digital marketing and thus doing away with traditional techniques used for marketing. VisitSingapore has been engaged and involved in the marketing using social media thus using it in to build such platforms in strengthening the existing brands and reaching to the potential visitors. VisitSingapore report in 2008 by Develop has shown that by the time the official online community was launched, VisitSingapore made use of platforms of social media as a major strategy to promote Singapore Brands and thus engaging them to online communities with an aim of reaching may potential customers.

In the tourism industry people may tend to book their travel trips when still at home, they can get arrangement with regards to the accommodations and the respective to and fro air tickets as well as finding information for the travel destination in a given travel forum.  As a result of the above information, it will be evident to say that the use of the internets and the information communication technologies has really helped in marketing and thus becoming a priority for both enterprise of tourism and that of DMOs. More knowledge has been displayed to the public as nowadays as a traveler, one doesn’t need to go to the airport or the booking place but one can have the knowledge of the destinations if before the they have arrived to their destinations and they can do this by searching information in blogs of travels and they can ask questions in the available forum where they will get instant feedbacks.

Significance of Study

In the given study, the findings in the research is practical and much more theoretical significant. At the first stage of the research findings, there are some current theories for the social media in marketing and the industry of hospitality which has temporarily been lacking in the given research. In conclusion of the research, one will be expected to give some recommendations that could be used in improving some of the strategy for the hotels of Hilton Singapore that will have some social marketing in the coming future.

The research has focused on the discussion and the analysis on the title role of marketing online using the social media as the destination. In this case Leverage of online marketing and the use of social media have been used in convincing the Destination Marketing Organizations that social networking media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube among others as the marketing tools for communication which will be a necessity used to build and strengthen the brands of destination as well encouraging engagement of audience as well as attracting the potential visitors. In discussing with regards to the case study of Hilton Singapore the following research question should be looked upon and tackled in details.

How has Destination Marketing Organizations used social media in engaging the audience in reaching to the potential group?

How has DMOs been able to build the brands using the social networking media?

What are some of the strategies of Social media in Tourism sector considering the case of Hilton Singapore Hotel?

Case Study/ Boundaries.

Singapore has been known to be a city that has greater name internationally because of its growth in the tourism sector especially in the executive and classic hotels in existence. It also known for the efficiency which is fast-paced and vibrancy which is multi-cultural and thus making it a home where enclaves is waiting to be discovered. Hilton Singapore is a hotel located in Singapore that has been known for having a well-appointed accommodation that has been offering not only retreats but also offering excellent springboards which have been used in exploring Singapore which may includes the step in to Hilton Singapore Hotel.

According to Tiley & Eleiy (2009), online marketing can be termed to be activity for promoting brands over the internet which may include emails. It is known for taking many forms which may include tools such as the search engines for marketing such as Google and Bing, marketing through emails, online advertising, use of social media platforms as well as usage of affiliate marketing.

Online marketing can also be used by different authors in many ways which may seem to be different such as when one does electronic marketing, digital marketing, marketing on the internet (Tilleys, 2009)and marketing on the web-based platforms. Johnston & Chaffey (2006) has explained the internet marketing to be simply termed as the “concept of achieving the objectives of marketing through the application of digital technologies” (Chaffey, 2007).

This topic is known for its vast features and characteristics and for Hilton Singapore to become successful through use of online marketing it has to find strategies of marketing which are suitable in reaching the target audience in their market and thus helping them in taking the full advantage and possession of online marketing. The following are some of the online marketing types and strategies that has been applied by Hilton Singapore and those that they need to put in to implementation.

Research Objective

This is using techniques to increase traffic in the website. If Hilton Singapore visitors can use the techniques wisely they can get the content in the website of the company as the search engines in the hotel website will be displayed on top bar results from the search and thus help to obtain more traffic. They can be classified in to three categories as explained here below.  

Primary Search Engine – this is also referred to as the Major and is commonly known by many people who uses search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo. Primary search engines have brought many people in to traffic of the hotel website. Primary search engines may differ slightly from the other depending on the functional operations it is intended to achieve.

Secondary Search Engines- are search engines which are known to have some general content and always targets a smaller and much more a specific audience. They are useful in regional as well as searches which are narrowly focused in generating the traffic which is valuable.  Some of the examples of such engines are such as Lycos, Look Smart, Ask.com among others. Their ranking always varies from one to the other.

Targeted Search Engines – they are also known as the topical search engines which are known for being specific search engines when compared with the other two. They focus on narrow areas in most cases it is usually in a general topic like Engineering, Medicine, Travel, sports among others. A good example is the city search in yahoo.

This is use of social media in promotion of a company’s product to known DB of the potential and existing customers via the use of email. This type of marketing has been so essential and thus becoming an integral part of the online marketing due to its acceptance as a mean of communication for the business and the consumers.  

This is one of the most popular type of online marketing strategy in the present world. This tool is used by most companies in obtaining more traffic through interactions with the customers. This has impacted in many ways the way the company and the consumers communicate. Social media marketing has offered platforms which are easily accessed by each and every individual through the internet.

This is an online marketing strategy where one must incur. In this strategy one must create dissimilar adverts with the keywords and placing them on the website they intend to. The much the organization will pay for the clicks the more its adverts will be appearing on the search engine. In order for one to succeed at Pay Per Click type of advertising, the most significant factor is one having the ability in persuading people by taking actions such as use of well-chosen words.

Safko (2010) explained that social media and the web 2.0 can work come together because both of them have similar goals which are principled in enabling a community to form a interaction forum with one another.  According to Reilly (2005), web 2.0 concept was initially began when the conference between Reilly Media and the MediaLive all focused on the ship which was noticeable in revolution of WWW. Web 2.0 always permits the user in interacting with the website and al; other people. Many users can create, do editing, rating their own content when they need to do so which may provide other users with information, they know nothing about with regards to the stated company.

SOM is the second level of marketing immediately after SOE. When the combination of SOE and SOM is done effectively one can be able to get good results. This may help one in becoming more visible and much more popularizing the available services in the various social sites where one has an account with such as the Facebook, twitter, YouTube and Instagram’s. Social Media optimization is defined as the effective strategy used in increasing one presence online using the help from the social media sites and the communities which are online (Numeros, 2018). Some of the services of SMO includes such techniques such as blogging, using images, videos and creating discussions online in order for one to keep the track of audience.

This chart above is composed of 7 categories, where in each category there are major players listed accordingly.  Google and Facebook are in the center of the model.

Social Networks – this has implicated on the creation of the virtual community where the users of the internet can do sharing, discussions, collaborate as well as argue about the given topics. Some of the social networks are such as the Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace among others where Facebook has been the dominant player in that category.

Blogs and Publishing – the erm blog comes from the combination of the words log and the web.

Multimedia-Sharing – this can be through files, audio and even video files.  The most known platform for sharing audios and videos is the YouTube.

Online Customer reviews and Rating – this is a platform in social media where customers after being server can do a review on the services offered and give a rating depending on the experience with the hotel.  A good survey can be conducted online to show the different age groups and how they trust the online services. The figure below shows such tabulated data

Tagging and social Bookmarking – tagging is a tool that has been used in helping the users of the internet in defining the content. Social bookmarking are sites which provide social networks to people so that the save, share and much more discover the relevant link of websites which are favorites.

Strategies in social media have been discussed in details.  The idea on strategies is not scaring a company brand in relation to the world of marketing through social media. The idea on marketing strategies is providing the Hotel Singapore with the right steps through which a successful social strategy can be put in to implementation thus making the company brand not to be left in the dust (York, 2018). The following are some of the strategy steps to be followed by Hilton Singapore in making it a success in online marketing.

One has to do a research on the audience in a given social media platform.  This will help in identification of the customer demographics.

Third is that one must establish all the metrics which are most important. In this one Hilton Singapore can be able to reach, clicks, engagement, Hashtag performance, sentiment as well as the organic and the paid likes.

Fourth is that Hilton Singapore must do a research on the social competitive landscape.

Fifth is that they should build and curate by engaging with their content in the social media.

Engagement with the social media audience and avoid ignoring them

Tracking all their efforts and using them in doing more improvements.

This topic is giving the reader a brief description of range of strategic researches, approaches and methods used in data gathering. In this concept qualitative research method has been applied in answering the research questions.

In this concept there is clear definition and expression of the problem as thus termed to be one of the significant preconditions for the development of research plan. In research conduction, one has to choose the strategy of the research with facts such as the time available, facilities in place, data available, analysis methods as well as the development of the researcher in terms of skill may also be critical.  

Daymon and Holloway (2002) explained that a case study is always intensive in that it is like an examination, one must use multiple sources to give evidence that may be quantitative as well as qualitative ones in a single entity which is bounded by the specific time and the exact place. In this case the chosen case study is that of Hilton Singapore hotel.

Data Collection

After identification of the research problem it is always appropriate for researcher to decide the ways data can be collected in order for one to make a comprehensive analysis (Holloway, 2002).  There are two ways through which data can be gathered and that is the primary and the secondary data collection methods respectively.

In the primary data collection methods, the sources are gained by directly detaching observation or measuring the phenomena in the real world, and which is always undisturbed by any interpreter or an intermediary. In this case of Hilton Singapore, the chosen method of in-depth was interview which is main method for data collection which used in combining the evaluation of Hilton Singapore contents in the website and the official blogs. In this case since the idea is understanding marketing communications and applications of social media in marketing, interviews were very useful kind of data to be collected as they allowed the researcher in exploring more perspectives and much more perceptions of the various stakeholders and the general public.  In the study an interview was conducted with Bender Martyn a guy responsible for the strategies of online marketing, communications over the internet and social media at Hilton Singapore Hotel.

This is one of the most important that needs to be undertaken. It may hard for a researcher to entirely depends on the primary data collected. The researcher must also consider the secondary data so that he or she can have a comprehensive and detailed data analysis with regards to the area of interest. In the study, the common form of secondary data is through book writings, articles, use of reports, newspapers and other publications may it be electronic or in a printed form.

According to Yin (2003), “Data analysis consists of examining, categorizing, tabulating, testing, or otherwise recombining both quantitative and qualitative evidence to address the Page 9 initial propositions of a study.” In this case study data analysis can be defined as the combining both the theoretical and the empirical data.  The idea is trying to build a theory framework which is solid and reliable that will be used in helping the authors to be able to process theories within the case study. Theory is considered as one of the sources of data in discussing and making conclusions in answering the questions being researched (Rika, 2003).

This is the gathering of information whereby one can gather them from a range of sources. There are various through which primary data can be collected stated as below.

Use of interviews

Surveys and questionnaires

Focus groups as well as observations

Documents and records.

In this case study of Hilton Singapore, the two methods used in collection primary data were the use of interviews, surveys as well as questionnaires. In the interview there were some set questions as it was in the questionnaires. The interview was performed to 6 stuff working within the organization while the questionnaires questions were distributed to about 30 stuffs within the organization. The interview questions were six and which were approximated to take about 10-15 minutes for each and every interviewee to be interviewed. The employees of Singapore Hotel were sharp and that they were intelligent in answering the questions as there was no one who asked for help and thus they stated all the questions were clear. The questions for the interview and those for the questionnaire are attached in the Appendix.

In analyzing such data in making to make sense and bring the meaning to the users there is need for one to do statistical analysis with regards to the gathered information. Using the response from the interviewees and the answer from the filled questionnaires the, following information was tabulated with regards to the effectiveness of Social media strategies to Hilton Hotel and to its competitors as well as the people working within the hotel.

The following results were tabulated in excel application to help in getting the mean, median, mode, standard deviation as well as the variance. The following results were collected from the excel sheet as it is indicated in the appendices section.

Mean, Mode, Median, Variance and standard Deviation collected from the Interviews.

Mean	4
Median	4.5
Mode	6
Standard Deviation	2.28035085
Variance	5.2

Mean, Mode, Median, Variance and standard Deviation collected from the Interviews

Mean	18.66666667
Median	23
Mode	26
Standard Deviation	11.21903145
Variance	125.8666667

From the above information it will be clear to say that the gap between the mode, median and mean is close, thus this shows that most of the employees are agreeing on the application of the social media strategies. The same case is applying from the response gathered from the questionnaires.

In the survey questions the responses was collected from 55 people working within the hotel. The questions are well indicated in the appendix and analyzed respectively where each question is statistically analyzed using a graph.  

The data analyzed has acted as a guide in helping one in evaluating the way one can do the evaluation of the existing social media platforms. This will help in giving recommendations to the organization with regards to which platform or strategy will benefit the organization without entirely affecting on the employee relationship with the management.

Online Marketing has become so much important in the strategies of any business in DMOs in the era of IT. It was shown that in the research in order for Hotel Singapore to be innovative in the competitive environment Destination Marketing Organizations must establish an online marketing strategy and thus remain with the attractive source of information which are attractive to the visitors.  Social media has not been considered as fad in nay way.

The reason behind that is that it may a major key for the DMOs in gaining the increase in the competition. Hilton Singapore will be needed to understand what is trending in the social media, recognizing the place where the visitors are geographically located by use of social media as the marketing communication channel in building the destinations brands and thus engaging by interacting with the visitors as one of the channels in recognizing the visitors needs in destination. The following are some of the recommendations that should be acknowledged by Hilton Singapore for them to be able to achieve the social media strategies they have set.

Ways in which they can identify the ways in which they can integrate the online marketing strategies with those existing in the traditional one. Nevertheless, the media used traditionally must not be excluded from the traditional media and marketing.

Must find ways through which they can evaluate the ROI (Return on Investment) in online marketing and the social media in the Destination Marketing Organizations and how they can measure the success of marketing online and activities in the social media platforms.

Examining ways of they can integrate the online marketing and social media with mobile social media and the social geo-location application with smartphones development.

Conclusions

The research has investigated on the approaches of online marketing practices using the social media as one of the digital marketing options in communication in building of destination brands and engaging the audience in reaching the potential visitors. The reason for taking the research was examining the roles of online marketing and the social media marketing strategies destinations as well as the managements. The most important finding that emerge in this study is that Destinations Marketing Organizations needs to give more emphasis by widely participating in the online marketing as well on the activities in the social media for them to achieve the associated benefits.  

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