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The hospitality industry has undergone rapid development and revolution due to technological change. It has experienced fundamental changes in organizational structures and power, which have taken place over a relatively short period. The information system has been radically revolutionized, characterized by data collection, processes, distribution, coordination, and control changes. Many hotels in the industry have been adopting ICT to cope with the rapidly changing environment in the hospitality industry. Aspects such as procurement, room service, wireless Internet, inventory systems, electronic transactions, hotel websites, and e-mails are some of the ICT applications many hotels have adopted over the years (Kansakar et al., 2019, 63). Information systems are essential in forming a solid foundation for effective supply chains.
The service process in the hospitality industry has been transformed into one that responds to consumer behavior and needs. All these are now dependent on technological development to be attained. The internet era has played a crucial role in helping the hotel industry consumers to change their behavior. It has led to the emergence of a new type of traveler interested in regional and global products and services to satisfy their needs, including exciting, emotional experiences, personal socialization, entertainment, and hobbies. On the other hand, technological development is also essential to hotel owners for two main reasons. First, hotel owners can obtain comprehensive data about their customer’s behaviors through technology. Secondly, technology helps hotel owners provide more personalized and better services and accommodations for their customers. Competitive companies use technology to identify patterns of potential and existing customers as a leverage tool against their competitors.
The amount of available data in such companies, including their accessibility, is bound to grow due to innovative phone technology, the Internet, and wearables. Combining these technologies has enabled travel brands to provide even more excellent personalized services to their customers faster. Hotel managers can quickly obtain customer data through many internet platforms, personal sites, and social media sites. They can also use smartphones and tablets to get information from tourists through questionnaires filled on the spot. Technological development has helped to provide different means of gathering both qualitative and quantitative data, which one can use to develop and improve the competitiveness of a company and the creation of a satisfied and loyal customer base.
Therefore, the hospitality industry has been able to use technology to collect and analyze data and cooperate and personalize with others. Currently, information about customers is still having a significant impact on how the industry operates. Hotels and restaurants are concentrating on improving their online presence and adopting marketing strategies that help them respond to the needs and demands of their customers (Sergio and Rita, 2018). Most business entities in the industry are now implementing technological innovations to help them increase their potential in enhancing.
The contemporary technological developments in the hospitality industry have compelled many organizations to adopt this trend for their existence in the future. It is the case with the tourism industry, where technological developments have considerably impacted the provision of goods and services. It has dramatically enhanced the tourism industry due to the explosion of information systems occasioned by technological developments, especially ICT (Khatri, 2019, 76). Therefore, the leveraging of contemporary technological developments has become mandatory for the continued existence of the tourism and hospitality industry now and in the future.
Contemporary technological development profoundly affects all aspects of life, and the hospitality industry is no exception. Emerging technologies have significantly transformed the way people communicate and allow for virtual and more effective socialization. The tourism and hospitality industry is an important sector and a significant source of the global economy. Therefore, it is considered a significant factor for economic growth, infrastructural development, and diversification of the local economy. The rapid growth of contemporary technological developments, especially in information technology and its applications, has led to the growth of the tourism and hospitality industry. The availability of the Internet and networks has allowed many business processes to be completed safely through electronic commerce (e-commerce). It is the sale, purchase, or supply of goods, services, and information via an electronic system between suppliers, producers, and consumers. In the hospitality industry, organizations that use e-commerce derive several benefits such as widespread marketing, reduction of employment costs, and effective communication with both their partners and consumers.
Consumers also benefit from companies using e-commerce. It saves time and effort, protects its products, and has the freedom to choose a product at the right price by taking advantage of offers and competing companies. The adoption of information technology in the tourism and hospitality industry in providing goods and services is a crucial factor in future success. Online tourism or E-tourism is part of e-commerce that contains virtual entities of travel agencies, transportation services, airlines, and tour operators involved in organizing tourism activities (Happ and Ivansco-Hovarth, 2018, 11)) In effect, e-tourism is set to significantly transform the process of conventional tourism services by redefining how organizations in the industry and other stakeholders relate with each other. The success of e-tourism can be gauged by the ease in which individuals can electronically access tourism services without physically visiting service providers.
It is a trend that is bound to continue and compels most organizations in the hospitality industry to adopt if they are to remain competitive. Contemporary technological developments have significantly changed the tourism and hospitality industry in various ways. For instance, smartphone mobile apps are used to buy and show airline tickets at airports. Tourists can also use them to book car rentals to reach the city center from airports. One can also use them to help tourists where to go on vacations. These apps have helped tourists visit otherwise unknown areas and assisted hotels, airlines, and airports in offering services aligned to these new technological developments. Such services include sockets, Wi-Fi on flights, and innovative payment systems through smartphones.
Moreover, biometric recognition systems are also being used at airports worldwide on eyes and fingerprints. These contemporary technological developments have had a significant impact on the hospitality industry now and in the future. They make travel ever more secure and safe and save a lot of time. Additionally, contemporary technological developments have made it possible for tourists to book different accommodation solutions from the cheapest to the most promising to satisfy customers’ ever-changing needs. It is also possible for tourists to manage nearly everything remotely, no matter in which country they are located. It has led to the emergence of tour operators who have replaced the traditional ones. In this regard, there has been a general decline in pricing coupled with an expanded offer package that favors the consumer due to competition in the hospitality and tourism industry. The luxury market has also been pushed further due to spreading such experiences to a broader audience.
The Internet emerged as a platform that could fulfill this need through websites launched for hotels, car rental bookings, and airlines. For example, Microsoft was among the first company to establish such a site known as Expedia for such a purpose. Soon after, various other companies launched their websites to provide quick access to information for stakeholders in the hospitality industry. Such information helped travelers organize their itineraries, book their holidays, and uncover the opaque pricing models of the past. The Internet created an explosion of online travel agencies (OTAs), which currently control over 90% of the hospitality market at the expense of travel brands. In 2004, the emergence of meta-search helped travel purchases and helped customers find travel results from several sites using one search.
The use of meta-search has dramatically increased the ability of customers to gain adequate information and make informed decisions concerning their traveling needs. Statistics indicate that over 50% of the Chinese, 35% of Britons, and 36% of American travelers use meta-search engines to help them compare rates. In 2013 alone, Kayak processed about 1.6 billion queries, which took four years to process. The number is expected to rise soon due to the development of technology (Espinet, 2019, 33). The ranking of hotels and OTAs is controlled by meta-search, based on their respective websites’ bid amount for search keywords. OTAs have capitalized on this model because of their more significant marketing spending and technical superiority to better placements of their products. Travel brands like hotels and restaurants need to be more transparent about their pricing to connect with their customers by using their websites, brilliant digital campaigns, and innovative technological solutions.
The Internet has helped businesses sell, buy, advertise, and respond to customers’ needs and demands online. It has enhanced globalization and helped reduce the cost of production, including the buying and selling of goods and services. It is a modern way of doing business that has greatly enhanced the prospects of the tourism and hospitality industry. It has helped many tourism brands advertise their goods and services at minimal costs and helped improve their visibility worldwide.
In the past, booking hotel reservations was a straightforward process made through a call or a letter requesting a room. Alternatively, one would have to locate a travel agent to create a complete vacation package that covers flights, accommodations, and car rentals for extended stays. However, over the years’ technology has dramatically transformed the hospitality industry. Unlike in the past when agencies made accommodation and travel arrangements, these activities are done entirely online. The majority of tourists are now making their bookings online. It gives them the option to make payments at check-in, which is an attractive offering to the modern customer. Therefore, the Internet offers more personal services to the customer and has made communication between service providers and consumers more effective depending on the demographics involved.
For example, in the travel sector, the emergence of the Internet has created platforms where travelers can vocalize their complaints and concerns, including having competitive pricing. Over the years, access to such kind of information there was a long process that involved the transmission of data from hotels, wholesalers, tour operators, travel agents, and guests. The information provided was usually shrouded in secrecy and lacked transparency, mainly where the payment was concerned. Customers lacked in-depth reviews and other data about their interests than those found in traveling forums and bulletins. It was a situation that created a gap that needed to be filled. The method used in making sales in the industry has radically changed from the standard rate cards to client customization. It is now possible for travelers to make informed decisions based on best experiences, reviews, exploring options, and price matching opportunities accessed via the Internet. The Internet helps tourists to plan their itinerary effectively.
Like any other industry, the hospitality industry is undergoing a transformation driven by technology. Technology is found in nearly all spheres of operations, including customer relationship management and online booking systems (Poddubnaya, 2019, 135). Smartphones and social media are slowly transforming the industry and helping to enable new heights of customer service. In the same light, customers have become more aware and demand better benefits from the industry. The possibilities that the Internet has created have increased the comprehensive manner in which data can be acquired, including its personalization and dissemination. The individual customer has now become the focus of attention by the industry. Proactive customers can now choose their accommodations by comparing prices, combining information and product features in real-time, and generating online bookings. They have replaced the passive customer of the past who were wholly dependent on different stakeholders in the industry to perform such tasks. It is now evident that information technology has helped increase the industry’s productivity, reduce costs, and add value to products and services offered to customers.
Social media are applications or websites that use Web 2.0 technology to enhance content creation, social networking, and sharing. These platforms enable users to create, discuss, share, and subscribe to content on an individual and communal basis without technical expertise. Content generated by the user is messages or posts that they create. Sites such as booking.com are online travel agency that features specific hotel reviews and are not social media platforms. However, certain websites import and display content created from social media platforms through a program known as API.
Social media platforms have been known to adopt e-commerce applications and content in recent times. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult to identify social media sites from other applications and websites. Even though most social media sites are global, regional differences exist. For example, China has its home-grown platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. It is also a fact that many social media platforms combine different applications. For instance, Facebook is a social media site that also features bulletin or community systems such as Facebook events and Groups that include the chat function.
Even though social media plays a critical role in all aspects of life, it also plays an increasingly crucial role in international tourism. The main reason is that international tourism is an information-intensive industry that was among the pioneers of e-commerce before the emergence of social media. Moreover, the social nature of tourism that includes recalling, recording, talking, and sharing travel experiences are socially essential activities. Its information asymmetries and high-risk nature can demonstrate the natural fit between tourism and social media. Therefore, tourism heavily relies on confidential sources of information to inform decisions, which has led to the development of the electronic word of mouth (eWOM) feature in social media platforms. Such sites also support the creation and distribution of content and messages, which play a critical role in tourism (Alghizzawi et al., 2018, 63). It may be through pictures, videos, audio, activity statistics, and the display of social connections and linkages.
The tourism industry is one of the most competitive service sectors that need the effective management of its financial, natural, and human resources in a specific country. It is, therefore, essential to provide appropriate infrastructure to improve customer satisfaction by providing quality services. It becomes necessary to provide good value to gain customer satisfaction through effective and successful marketing. There are various marketing media that can be used to achieve this end. One of the most effective marketing instruments is social media to establish good customer relations. Many international tourism boards worldwide use social media to provide booking services to customers, especially in those countries that have a higher internet penetration and usage of credit cards, such as the UK and USA. However, some more minor travel and tourism markets also exhibit higher levels of social media usage. Such countries include Australia and Scandinavia. About 50% of leisure travel and business trips are booked online on a global scale.
Social media marketing has a considerable impact on satisfying tourism demands globally. The accessibility of internet services has transformed tourist motivation in planning and booking trips to different destinations. Most tourist organizations and tourism boards worldwide increase their familiarity and confidence with social media platforms and websites to gather consumer behavior and preferences. Such organizations use social media to encourage and stimulate interactions with customers and facilitate the development of awareness of tourists in countries in which they intend to visit. A country’s tourism review team and boards have the role of attracting new visitors to their respective countries by creating and submitting relevant articles to related directories. Consequently, hundreds of appropriate and thematic one-way backlinks are created and increase search engine rankings on platforms such as Yahoo and Google that are easily accessible to targeted audiences.
International tourism boards have an active and robust presence on social media platforms which make a substantial difference to travelers when making important decisions about visiting particular destinations. The visibility of such organizations on social media platforms helps them showcase their unique attractions to tourists and enhance bookings. Most of these organizations elevate their visibility on social media platforms through various social media campaign ideas that have proven to produce tangible results.
Several economic factors and new forms of behaviors exhibited by tourists, including internet technologies, are likely to result in the emergence and growth of a new tourism market. Social media plays an important role and has a considerable impact on destination marketing, promotion, and decision-making because it emphasizes interaction with tourists. Social media provides easy access to booking facilities and information to many consumers concerning tourism destinations. It helps tourists save on travel costs because of the availability of a wide range of services offered at relatively low prices. Moreover, it also provides a medium of communication for interaction and relationship development with market intermediaries and tourism suppliers, including end-consumers. Social media has become a standard medium for consumers to share and search for information, experiences, and opinions with others. In recent times, consumers who are planning to make a trip have adequate resources such as personal blogs and virtual tourist communities, and destination marketing organizations to get information (Kim et al., 2017, 689). Tourists can also post their valuations and experienced on social media sites of brands and specific destinations to influence the decisions of others. It is an activity that makes social media an effective medium or platform that fosters the spread of eWOM.
A destination marketing organization (DMO) promotes a country, region, town, or city to increase tourism. It markets and promotes the development of a specific destination by emphasizing tourism marketing, conventional sales, and services. Their main objective is to promote the economic development of a particular destination by increasing the number of visitors and business travelers. Such marketing aims to generate visits to restaurants, overnight lodgings, and shopping revenues. Government taxes fund such organizations. They are essential tourism marketing organizations because they are responsible for marketing the destination brand through tourism products and travel awareness. These organizations generate a lot of direct and indirect revenues for their respective destinations due to their sales and marketing management. Their primary medium for marketing is social media which they use to attain their marketing goals and objectives and destination branding through the use of tools provided by Web 2.0.
Today, social media and social review sites significantly impact tourism and hospitality organizations. They are used more often than the physical activity of persons in communication. Social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are primarily used by organizations, including social review sites such as Trip Advisor. The use of social media as a form of communication is faster in disseminating information than any other form. Individuals no longer need to wait for long to communicate to understand the situation of a specific tourist destination that they wish to visit. Social media sites can provide easily accessible word-of-mouth references at minimal time.
Moreover, one can also easily access visual information concerning a tourist destination on social review sites and social media. It makes it easier to decide a particular tourist destination as the best place to travel. Statistics indicate that nearly 70% of tourists that have visited specific goals write reviews about their experiences in those locations during their travels (Moro and Rita, 2018). Most tourists find that the Trip Advisor reviews on social media are dependable and accurate. Furthermore, most travelers are said not to book hotels before they consult its review, usually accessible from social media sites. Destination reviews on social media sites are the most trusted sources of information by many tourists. It is because they give first-hand and reliable information which help them make informed decisions.
Social media has had a significant impact on tourism organizations’ advertising expenses and marketability. The use of social media sites has dramatically reduced the advertising expenditures of such organizations because it is relatively cheap to use social media as an advertising medium. Moreover, these organizations can reach a wider audience due to the vast database provided by social media sites. In addition to that, such organizations can effectively market themselves because of the large audience found on social media sites. The tourism reach is global, and tourist organizations need to make themselves visible to a broad market. Such an undertaking is only possible when they use social media sites for marketing themselves and their offerings.
Therefore, social media sites act as a cost-saving measure for tourism and hospitality organizations because it facilitates savings on advertisements and marketing. Tourism and hospitality organizations incur minimal costs when using social media sites. They are also able to engage a wide range of tourists using social media sites. The close interactions between such organizations and their target audiences help them to understand their needs and motivations at a personal level. The interaction helps the organizations to provide relevant and effective services to their customers because they fully understand their needs and demands. The can also use the same medium to address pertinent issues affecting their customers which are raised on social media. The current generation of tourists is known for surfing to satisfy their needs rather than physically searching for them. Due to the fast pace of life, few people find the time to interact at a physical level. Consequently, social media has become an effective and convenient means of communication that saves time, money and effort. This type of situation has helped to reduce costs in the tourism and hospitality industry and increased the business flow. The profit margins on advertising and marketing campaigns have reduced drastically. As a result, tourist organizations have been able to pass some of these benefits to consumers and increase their market share.
Reference List
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Happ, É. and Ivancsó-Horváth, Z., (2018). Digital tourism is the challenge of future–a new approach to tourism. Knowledge Horizons, Economics, 10(2), pp.9-16
Kansakar, P., Munir, A. and Shabani, N. (2019). Technology in the hospitality industry: Prospects and challenges. IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, 8(3), pp.60-65.
Khatri, I. (2019). Information technology in tourism & hospitality industry: A review of ten years’ publications. Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Education, 9, pp.74-87.
Kim, S.E., Lee, K.Y., Shin, S.I. and Yang, S.B. (2017). Effects of tourism information quality in social media on destination image formation: The case of Sina Weibo. Information & management. 54(6), pp.687-702.
Poddubnaya, N.V. (2019). The use of Internet technologies in tourism marketing. In Actual Problems of Service Development and Tourism, (pp. 135-137).
Sergio, M. and Rita, P. (2018). Brand strategies in social media in hospitality and tourism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
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