Exploring the impact of social media platform image on hotel customers’ visit intention

Abstract

Purpose Many tourism-related industries, such as hotels, use social media as a marketing tool for promotion and distribution. This paper aims to use a model that explores the impact of social media platform image (SMPI) on customers’ visit intention (VI) in a hotel context, using hotel image (HI), motivation (Mot) and anticipated service quality (ASQ) as mediators. The objectives of this study are then: to understand the interactions between the two brand images, to test the mediation effect of HI, Mot and ASQ and to investigate how this interaction contributes to customers’ VI to hotel. Design/methodology/approach This study used a convenience sampling method that targeted respondents who are willing to book a hotel using a social media platform such as Facebook and a hotel reservation website (Agoda, Airbnb, Booking.com, Hotels.com and Trivago) that have forums that allow customers to share their experiences. The survey was conducted through various social media platforms, with 349 responses being collected. Findings This study finds that SMPI contributes to Mot largely through HI, Mot partly mediates the relationship between HI and ASQ and Mot contributes to VI mostly through direct impact and a small part through ASQ. The findings also indicate that SMPI is less potent in terms of contributing to the later constructs if HI is low. Practical implications This research provides practical implications for marketers serving the hotel industry, and social media sites, and establishes the interrelationship between them. This research also offers insight to the hotel managers for using social media platforms to attract potential visitors because social media platforms in recent years have become significant contributors to customers’ decision-making process of booking and visiting a hotel. Originality/value This study provides results on how social media platforms can be caused to become a more effective hotel promotion channel.

The role of health and safety protocols and brand awareness for the recovery of hotel activity following a health crisis

“…Berbekova et al, 2021;Li et al, 2022;Wut et al, 2021). Chen et al (2022) identify that, although previous epidemic research has highlighted consumers' perceptions of risk and associated changes to their travel behavior, potential strategies for ameliorating such behavioral changes while maintaining safety and security have largely been ignored (Ding et al, 2022;Ho et al, 2022;Simonetti and Bigne, 2022). This paper addresses this concern by offering an empirical study in which (1) it is shown that the use of health and safety protocols contributes to the generation of a higher perceived value and intention to visit the hotel (compared to hotels that do not use a health and safety protocol) and ( 2) evaluated the moderating role of the hotel brand awareness on the effects that the use of health and safety protocols on perceived value and the intention to stay at the hotel.…”

Integrating the reviewers’ and readers’ perceptions of negative online reviews for customer decision-making: a mixed-method approach

“…This study’s findings offer theoretical implications for the hospitality literature. First, this study contributes to research on the consumption of media in the hospitality industry by investigating online reviews from integrated websites and SNS (Ho et al , 2022). Second, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first to integrate the two perspectives of writers and readers simultaneously to provide a holistic view of the online reviews process from production to consumption.…”

“…Understanding how readers perceive and interpret online reviews is extremely important for hospitality businesses and tourist destinations, as online consumer reviews influence travelers’ choices (Chatterjee, 2020). For example, readers are motivated to stay at properties after observing images on social media platforms (Ho et al , 2022). The impact of online review is all the more pertinent to the tourism and hospitality businesses because of the complex process of deciding where to stay, how to move, what to eat and where to go (Filieri et al , 2015).…”

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“…Previous studies on hotel survival have ignored the crucial internet-related environmental factor of online media coverage. Many hotels conduct online marketing on online media platforms through media coverage and other forms (Ho et al , 2022), which has a non-negligible impact on customers’ behavior and hospitality firm survival. Online news inconsistency can be used as an efficient marketing tool for small and medium-sized hotels to bring brand awareness at a low cost.…”