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 travel information
search processes and in actual purchasing decisions of customers.
Hotel business is now taking advantage of introducing the use of social media into their
marketing programs, 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 the way in which hotels interact with customers on social media. Results
show that European hotels are still in the first steps of development of a social media strategy
that presents a moderate level of integration among different media. They are considered a
useful instrument to promote the hotel brand but potentiality of customer engagement is still
undervalued.