Abstract
Social media communication has become a fundamental tool for hospitality companies, especially for marketing and customer engagement purposes. Facebook is the social network most used by hotels, both to interact and to establish relationships with their customers, and to provide them with relevant content and information, which may contribute to a positive travel experience and overall satisfaction. In general, content hotels post on Facebook either emphasizes hotels’ services (hotel-level or internal information) or aspects related to where the hotels are located (destination-level or external information) while conveying emotional attributes. Thus, this study aims to unveil the content strategy of these two types of content levels for hotels in the two most-visited cities in Spain, as well as to explore the emotional aspect of hotel Facebook posts. To do so, 4725 Facebook messages posted by 189 hotels in Barcelona and 1175 posted by 47 hotels in Madrid were analyzed using compositional data analysis, which accounts for the relative importance (shares) of different types of contents. Results show that hotels in Barcelona post more content related to hotel services and hotels in Madrid post more content related to the destination.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adjei MT, Noble SM, Noble CH (2010) The influence of C2C communications in online brand communities on customer purchase behavior. J Acad Mark Sci 38(5):634–653. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-009-0178-5
Alalwan AA, Rana NP, Dwivedi YK, Algharabat R (2017) Social media in marketing: a review and analysis of the existing literature. Telematics Inform 34(7):1177–1190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2017.05.008
Ashley C, Tuten T (2015) Creative strategies in social media marketing: an exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychol Mark 32(1):15–27. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20761
Baloglu S, McCleary KW (1999) A model of destination image formation. Ann Tour Res 26(4):868–897. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-7383(99)00030-4
Bandyopadhyay R, Morais D (2005) Representative dissonance. Ann Tour Res 32(4):1006–1021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2005.02.002
Blasco-Duatis M, Saez M, FernándezGarcía N (2018) Compositional representation (CoDa) of the Agenda-setting of the political opinion makers in the main Spanish media groups in the 2015 general election. Commun Soc 31(2):1–24. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.31.2.1-24
Bonsón Ponte E, Carvajal-Trujillo E, Escobar-Rodríguez T (2015) Corporate Facebook and stakeholder engagement. Kybernetes 44(5):771–787. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-07-2014-0136
Brown MB, Forsythe AB (1974) The small sample behavior of some statistics which test the equality of several means. Technometrics 16(1):129–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/00401706.1974.10489158
Catalan Government (2018) Guia d’establiments i activitats turístiques. https://empresa.extranet.gencat.cat/rtcwebguies/AppJava/Hotels.jsp?pst=2&lg=. Accessed 20 Aug 2018
Chan NL, Guillet BD (2011) Investigation of social media marketing: How does the hotel industry in hong kong perform in marketing on social media websites? J Travel Tour Mark 28(4):345–368. https://doi.org/10.1080/10548408.2011.571571
El País (2019) Madrid dobla a Barcelona en visitantes a museos. https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/01/05/catalunya/1546718544_074322.html. Accessed 5 May 2019
Facebook (2019) Facebook reports first quarter 2019 results. https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2019/Facebook-Reports-First-Quarter-2019-Results/default.aspx. Accessed 15 May 2019
Felix R, Rauschnabel PA, Hinsch C (2017) Elements of strategic social media marketing: a holistic framework. J Bus Res 70:118–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.05.001
Ferrer-Rosell B, Coenders G (2017) Airline type and tourist expenditure: Are full service and low cost carriers converging or diverging? J Air Transp Manag 63:119–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jairtraman.2017.06.014
Ferrer-Rosell B, Coenders G (2018) Destinations and crisis. Profiling tourists’ budget share from 2006 to 2012. J Destin Mark Manag 7:26–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2016.07.002
Ferrer-Rosell B, Coenders G, Martínez-Garcia E (2015) Determinants in tourist expenditure composition—the role of airline types. Tour Econ 21(1):9–32. https://doi.org/10.5367/te.2014.0434
Ferrer-Rosell B, Coenders G, Martínez-Garcia E (2016) Segmentation by tourist expenditure composition: an approach with compositional data analysis and latent classes. Tour Anal 21(6):589–602. https://doi.org/10.3727/108354216x14713487283075
Ferrer-Rosell B, Martin-Fuentes E, Marine-Roig E (2019) Do hotels talk on facebook about themselves or about their destinations? In: Pesonen J, Neidhardt J (eds) Information and communication technologies in tourism. Springer, Cham, pp 344–356. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05940-8_27
Ge J, Gretzel U (2017) The role of humour in driving customer engagement. In: Schegg R, Stangl B (eds) Information and communication technologies in tourism. Springer, Cham, pp 461–474. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51168-9_33
Geerts W (2018) Top 100 city destinations ranking. https://go.euromonitor.com/white-paper-travel-2018-100-cities.html?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=CT_WP_18_12_04_100Cities&utm_content = organic. Accessed 12 May 2019
Gretzel U, Fesenmaier DR (2012) Customer relations 2.0-implications for destination marketing (Abstract). Paper presented at TTRA annual international conference, Virginia Beach, VA, 17–19 June 2012
Gretzel U, Yoo K-H (2014) Premises and promises of social media marketing in tourism. In: McCabe S (ed) The routledge handbook of tourism marketing. Roudlege, New York, pp 491–504
Hays S, Page SJ, Buhalis D (2013) Social media as a destination marketing tool: its use by national tourism organisations. Curr Issues Tour 16(3):211–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2012.662215
Herjanto H, Erickson E, Calleja NF (2017) Antecedents of business travelers’ satisfaction. J Hosp Mark Manag 26(3):259–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/19368623.2017.1234954
Hsu Y-L (2012) Facebook as international eMarketing strategy of Taiwan hotels. Int J Hosp Manag 31(3):972–980. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2011.11.005
Huertas A, Marine-Roig E (2016) User reactions to destination brand contents in social media. Inf Technol Tour 15(4):291–315. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-015-0045-9
Ibrahim B, Aljarah A (2018) Dataset of relationships among social media marketing activities, brand loyalty, revisit intention. Evidence from the hospitality industry in Northern Cyprus. Data Brief 21:1823–1828. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2018.11.024
INE (2018) Instituto Nacional de Estadística. http://www.ine.es. Accessed 5 May 2019
Kang J (2018) Effective marketing outcomes of hotel Facebook pages: the role of active participation and satisfaction. J Hosp Tour Insights 1(2):106–120. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTI-10-2017-0003
Kaplan AM, Haenlein M (2010) Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Bus Horiz 53(1):59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003
Kim J, Hastak M (2018) Social network analysis: characteristics of online social networks after a disaster. Int J Inf Manage 38(1):86–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.08.003
Kim D-H, Spiller L, Hettche M (2015) Analyzing media types and content orientations in Facebook for global brands. J Res Interact Mark 9(1):4–30. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-05-2014-0023
Kwok L, Yu B (2013) Spreading Social Media Messages on Facebook: an Analysis of Restaurant Business-to-Consumer Communications. Cornell Hosp Q 54(1):84–94. https://doi.org/10.1177/1938965512458360
Law R, Leung D, Chan ICC (2019) Progression and development of information and communication technology research in hospitality and tourism. Int J Contempor Hosp Manag. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-07-2018-0586
Lee D, Hosanagar K, Nair HS (2018) Advertising content and consumer engagement on social media: evidence from Facebook. Manage Sci 64(11):5105–5131. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2902
Leung Xi Yu, Baloglu S (2015) Hotel Facebook marketing: an integrated model. Worldwide Hosp Tour Themes 7(3):266–282. https://doi.org/10.1108/WHATT-03-2015-0011
Leung XY, Jiang L (2018) How do destination Facebook pages work? An extended TPB model of fans’ visit intention. J Hosp Tour Technol 9(3):397–416. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-09-2017-0088
Leung D, Law R, van Hoof H, Buhalis D (2013) Social media in tourism and hospitality: a literature review. J Travel Tour Mark 30(1–2):3–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10548408.2013.750919
Leung Xi Y, Bai B, Stahura KA (2015) The marketing effectiveness of social media in the hotel industry. J Hosp Tour Res 39(2):147–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/1096348012471381
Leung XY, Bai B, Erdem M (2017) Hotel social media marketing: a study on message strategy and its effectiveness. J Hosp Tour Technol 8(2):239–255. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-02-2017-0012
Linares-Mustarós S, Coenders G, Vives-Mestres M (2018) Financial performance and distress profiles. From classification according to financial ratios to compositional classification. Adv Account 40:1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adiac.2017.10.003
Lo YC, Fang C-Y (2018) Facebook marketing campaign benchmarking for a franchised hotel. Int J Contempor Hosp Manag 30(3):1705–1723. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-04-2017-0206
Madrid City Council (2019) Oferta hotelera en la ciudad de Madrid por Tipo y Categoría del establecimiento. https://www.madrid.es/UnidadesDescentralizadas/UDCEstadistica/Nuevaweb/Turismoy/eventos/Turismo/Infraestructura/hotelera/P120119.xls. Accessed 12 May 2019
Marine-Roig E, Anton Clavé S (2016) A detailed method for destination image analysis using user-generated content. Inf Technol Tour 15(4):341–364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-015-0040-1
Marine-Roig E, Ferrer-Rosell B (2018) Measuring the gap between projected and perceived destination images of Catalonia using compositional analysis. Tour Manag 68:236–249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2018.03.020
Martín-Fernández JA, Hron K, Templ M, Filzmoser P, Palarea-Albaladejo J (2015) Bayesian-multiplicative treatment of count zeros in compositional data sets. Stat Model 15:134–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/1471082X14535524
Martín-Ferńandez JA, Palarea-Albaladejo J, Olea RA (2011) Dealing with zeros. In: Pawlowsky-Glahn V, Buccianti A (eds) Compositional data analysis: theory and applications. Wiley, New York, pp 43–58. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119976462.ch4
Martin-Fuentes E, Daries-Ramon N, Cristobal-Fransi E, Coll-Torres A (2019) Uso de Instagram por parte del sector de alojamiento turístico: comparativa entre hoteles de 5 estrellas y hostales de la ciudad de Barcelona. In: Lapiedra R (ed) Turismo eres tu: El valor de las personas. Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, pp 203–226. ISBN 978-84-1336-646-3
Minazzi R, Lagrosen S (2014) Investigating social media marketing in the hospitality industry: Facebook and european hotels. In: Xiang Z, Tussyadiah I (eds) Information and communication technologies in tourism. Springer, Cham, pp 145–157. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03973-2_11
Morais J, Thomas-Agnan C, Simioni M (2018) Using compositional and Dirichlet models for market share regression. J Appl Stat 45(9):1670–1689. https://doi.org/10.1080/02664763.2017.1389864
Moro S, Rita P (2018) Brand strategies in social media in hospitality and tourism. Int J Contempor Hosp Manag 30(1):343–364. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-07-2016-0340
Müller I, Hron K, Fišerová E, Šmahaj J, Cakirpaloglu P, Vančáková J (2018) Interpretation of compositional regression with application to time budget analysis. Austrian J Stat 47(2):3–19. https://doi.org/10.17713/ajs.v47i2.652
Öz M (2015) Social media utilization of tourists for travel-related purposes. Int J Contempor Hosp Manag 27(5):1003–1023. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-01-2014-0034
Pantelidis IS (2010) Electronic meal experience: a content analysis of online restaurant comments. Cornell Hosp Q 51(4):483–491. https://doi.org/10.1177/1938965510378574
Pawlowsky-Glahn V, Egozcue J (2011) Exploring compositional data with the CoDa-dendrogram. Austrian J Stat 40(1–2):103–113. https://doi.org/10.17713/ajs.v40i1&2.202
Pawlowsky-Glahn Vera, Egozcue JJ, Tolosana-Delgado R (2015) Modeling and analysis of compositional data. Wiley, Chichester
Pearson K (1897) Mathematical contributions to the theory of evolution.—on a form of spurious correlation which may arise when indices are used in the measurement of organs. Proc R Soc Lond 60(359–367):489–498
Pino G, Peluso AM, Del Vecchio P, Ndou V, Passiante G, Guido G (2019) A methodological framework to assess social media strategies of event and destination management organizations. J Hosp Mark Manag 28(2):189–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/19368623.2018.1516590
Russell MA (2014) Mining the social web: data mining Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + , GitHub, and more. O’Reilly, Sebastopol
Spain.info (2018) Spain.info. Web oficial de la marca turística Spain. http://www.spain.info/es/consultas/alojamientos/ver-todos-los-hoteles-espana.html?c1=Alojamientos&c2=Hoteles&c3=1+estrellas&l1=Madrid&l2=Madrid&tv=l. Accessed 12 Apr 2019
Su N, Reynolds D, Sun B (2015) How to make your Facebook posts attractive. Int J Contempor Hosp Manag 27(8):1772–1790. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-06-2014-0302
Vaičiukynaitė E, Gatautis R (2018) How hotel companies can foster customer sociability behaviour on Facebook? J Bus Econ Manag 19(4):630–647. https://doi.org/10.3846/jbem.2018.5691
Vives-Mestres M, Martín-Fernández JA, Kenett RS (2016) Compositional data methods in customer survey analysis. Qual Reliab Eng Int 32(6):2115–2125. https://doi.org/10.1002/qre.2029
Wang C, Kubickova M (2017) The impact of engaged users on eWOM of hotel Facebook page. J Hosp Tour Technol 8(2):190–204. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-09-2016-0056
Wrigley N (1988) Monographs on statistics and applied probability - the statistical analysis of compositional data - Aitchison. J Environ Plan A 20(3):407–408
Yen C-L, Tang C-H (2015) Hotel attribute performance, eWOM motivations, and media choice. Int J Hosp Manag 46:79–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2015.01.003
Yoo KH, Lee W (2017) Facebook marketing by hotel groups: Impacts of post content and media type on fan engagement. In: Sigala M, Gretzel U (eds) Advances in social media for travel, tourism and hospitality: new perspectives, practice and cases. Routledge, London, pp 131–146
Zhou X, Ferrer-Rosell B, Coenders G (2017) Use of social media as e-marketing tool. Comparison of Weibo posts of big and small hotels in China. In: Correia A (ed) The art of living together. 7th advances tourism marketing conference. Faro, Algarve, pp 127–131 (CEFAGE-Universidade do Algarve)
Zori del Amo J (2015) Duelo de titanes: Barcelona VS. Madrid. https://www.traveler.es/viajes-urbanos/articulos/duelo-de-titanes-barcelona-vs-madrid/7506. Accessed 2 May 2019
Acknowledgements
Authors are pleased to acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Grant IDs ECO2017-88984-R and TIN2015-71799-C2-2-P), the support of the Catalan Government for the accreditation as Consolidated Research Group TURESCO (2017 SG4 49) and the University of Lleida Grant 2017-TR265. Finally, the authors wish to thank Marc Alimbau, Anna Tkach and Alice Florina Ghencea from the University of Lleida, for their help with data collection. This research article has received a grant for its linguistic revision from the Language Institute of the University of Lleida (2019 call).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ferrer-Rosell, B., Martin-Fuentes, E. & Marine-Roig, E. Diverse and emotional: Facebook content strategies by Spanish hotels. Inf Technol Tourism 22, 53–74 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-019-00164-z
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-019-00164-z