Discuss the role and significance of social media in tourism Essay

Discuss the role and significance of social media in tourism marketing. You must consider the broader context of ICTs, new chann - Essay Example Travel involves movement through geographic space and time. Technologies take parts in all functions of strategic and operational management. Nowadays, social media is the main route where information is being shared and delivered in tourism, and also where offers made by the tourism suppliers are promoted. â€Å"According to a study made by Lab42, more than 50% of people who use social media when planning their trips change their plans depending on what information they learn from social media. For those people who had changed their travel plans, 43% of them even changed their hotels or resorts.† As information is so important to tourism, technologies provide both opportunities and challenges for the industry (DimitriosBuhalis, 1998). Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein have define social media as â€Å"a group of internet-based applications that build in the ideological and technological foundation of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated conte nt.† The users of the internet form virtual communities where they each have an anonym and protected identity. Consumer-generated content (CGC) is generated by the use of social media. It includes a variety of new and up-and-coming sources of online information, which are created, begun, distributed and made use of by consumers. This is done with the intent of enlightening each other about products, trademarks, services and concerns (Blackshaw&Nazzaro, 2006). In contrast, to the supplier- generated content (SCG) that is made available by marketers and suppliers, social media are created by consumers to be shared among themselves. With the enormous amount of data available to the travelers, the internet constitutes an important platform for information exchange between consumers with shared interests, as well as industry suppliers (e.g. attractions, hotels, and transportation sectors,), mediators (e.g. travel agents), regulation bodies (e.g. governments and executive organizati ons and non-profit organizations (e.g. destination marketing organizations) (Werthner& Klein, 1999). Today, Web 2.0 also referred to as Travel 2.0 in tourism, includes a range of new technological applications such as media and content syndication, mash-ups, AJAX, tagging, wikis, web forums and message boards, customer ratings and evaluation systems, virtual worlds, podcasting, blogs and online videos (vlogs) (Schmallegger& Carson, 2008). These social media include a wide range of applications, allowing consumers to â€Å"post†, â€Å"tag†, â€Å"digg†, or â€Å"blog† on the internet (Xiang &Gretzel, 2010). For example, Facebook, which is a social media website, allowing users to add friends, send messages to people and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves during the travel; weblogs, individual or a group of people maintain a website with regular entries of commentary, description of events, or graphic materials like videos or images. Some travelers write travel blogs about their experiences and memories of the trip, which are online travel journals, also known as travelogs. YouTube, which is a website for sharing videos, which users can upload and distribute videos. This is a platform where vloggers (i.e. video blogging people) can record their traveling memories into video and upload onto YouTube for others to view, instead of typing a passage for people to read. There are many other