Business and marketing processes have changed because of the internet and social media.

Business and marketing processes have changed because of the internet and social media. Social media includes apps and websites that help people in social networking. Social networking involves sharing videos, photos, content and information about different subjects.

A few years ago, young businesses would focus on putting their advertisements in traditional media like newspapers and posters. Back then, this was the main method of marketing.

With technology, hospitality businesses no longer depend on solely targeting the people around them (Castleford, 2016). They have discovered that they have a global audience and they must find ways to appeal to these audiences. The conversation has shifted online because the internet has become accessible to people from different areas in the world.

One of the main drivers of this revolution is social media. Social media includes sites that connect people and each social media channel has its best practices. It has been instrumental in making sure that businesses are promoting themselves (Chan & Guillet, 2011). The internet brought new communication channels and a business must craft a social media strategy if it is to make it in these times.

1. Rating and Review Sites

In the hospitality industry, social media and digital media are important marketing tools. One of the ways social media has impacted the hotel industry is by having rating and review sites. Examples of such sites are Zagat and Trip Adviser. These sites may impact a business positively or negatively. These review sites have influenced hotels and hospitality outlets by making them improve their services and offerings.

For example, is a person receives bad food or service in a place, they can write it on the review site and they can influence other people’s decisions depending on what they said. Excellent outlets can also benefit because when someone says a good thing about the outlet, the hotel will have more clients (Francis, 2016).

Such sites have also made hotels adhere to international standards because they want to be rated among the best and they are catering to a global audience. There is also a crop of writers and bloggers who may write different positive or negative review in certain websites and magazines and this as affected how hotels carry out their daily operations.

2.Marketing

Another way social media has influenced how hotels run their operations is marketing. Most hotels have a budget allocated to marketing and social media is a channel that delivers some amazing results. For example, a hotel can post their menu and rates online and anyone can have access to that information.

Hotels can also post information about their rooms, chef, deals, events, and specials (Leung, Bai, & Stahura, 2013). All this information would not have been easily available a few years ago. Twitter and Instagram are channels that deal with peers and how they exchange information. Instagram has revolutionized the game because it enables people to share images to a larger audience (Hoque, 2000).

3. Language & Communication

There have been changes in language and mode of communication across these channels but businesses have found a way to integrate themselves into the conversation. Social media makes the business entity relatable and people feel like they are speaking to a human being as opposed to speaking to the business.

This makes people move from leads to clients. Influencer marketing and endorsements have also taken root. There is a huge number of sponsored content and celebrity endorsements on the internet. For example, an influential personality like Cristiano Ronaldo can post a photo on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram while he is wearing a certain watch and people will go buy that watch.

The company selling the watch gets the results that they wanted and this was through the influencer marketing. It is up to a business to know the strategy that it wants for its social media depending on the results it seeks. Marketing goes hand in hand with spreading brand awareness (Thompson, 2016). It is hard to quantify the impact of brand awareness but the aim is to get the hotel being mentioned a lot and eventually this will influence people to visit the hotel (Olson, 2016).

4. Client Relationships

Social media has also helped hotels to communicate with their clients and this helps in client relationship management. By having a transparent way to communicate with clients, businesses can be accountable and this creates a relationship with existing and prospective clients (Tuten & Solomon, 2013). For example, when a person asks something about a brand on Facebook, it is up to the social media manager of the hotel to communicate back to them.

It does not matter whether the person wrote something negative or positive, the company should respond in a good way. Providing as much information as possible to people on social media is a great way for a brand to showcase its products and be accountable.

Social media can also enable a business to collect people’s information so that they can communicate to them offers that will be meaningful to them. Every business has the way that it treats its customers but treating them with respect is very important (Gemm, 2016).

5. Advertisements

Advertising has also become easy with social media. Back in the day, the traditional means of advertising were the only ways that a business would sell itself. There are many ways that a business can advertise on these platforms (Gilmore, 2016).

Facebook advertising has become a necessity for every business that wants to get itself out there. Twitter and Instagram have also monetized their platforms and for a certain price, they can give businesses a certain reach for their posts. There are many types of ads available today and this has made small businesses have a level playing field with big businesses.

Sources

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Chan, N. and Guillet, B. (2011). Investigation of Social Media Marketing: How Does the Hotel Industry in Hong Kong Perform in Marketing on Social Media Websites?. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 28(4), pp.345–368.
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