Tourism Management, Marketing, and Development

Volume I: The Importance of Networks and ICTs

M. Mariani, R. Baggio, D. Buhalis, C. Longhi, M. Mariani, R. Baggio, D. Buhalis, C. Longhi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137354358
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Tourism Management, Marketing, and Development revolves around the implementation of ICT applications in the tourism sector: technology is engendering a major shift both in the performance of individuals and companies involved in the tourism sector and having an impact on the way individuals consume services and enjoy experiences in space and time.

P A R T I

ICT and Tourism

C H A P T E R O N E

Tourism Branding, Identity, Reputation Co-creation, and Word-of-Mouth in the Age of Social Media

Dimitrios Buhalis and Alessandro Inversini

Introduction

Developments in the information and communication technologies (ICTs) have changed the operational and strategic practices of organizations on a global level and altered the competitiveness of enterprises and regions around the world (Buhalis and Law, 2008). E-tourism, defined as the application of ICTs on the tourism industry has dramatically affected the strategic and operational management of tourism organizations and destinations (Buhalis, 2003). The Internet has enabled companies to expand their customer base to cover the global population cost effectively. Tourism-related industries, such as airlines and hotel chains, are able to access international customers and develop the tools to manage properties around the world at the touch of a button (Egger and Buhalis, 2008). Small companies can also for the first time develop their “virtual size” and offer their services to global markets (O’Connor, 1999; Spencer, Buhalis, and Moital, 2012). Tourism enterprises are recognizing the importance of technologies in their field, and they acknowledge that the management of their holistic online presence is a prerequisite for success (Inversini, Brülhart, and Cantoni, 2011). In addition, since 2005, social media and Web 2.0 have provided a group of Internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content (UGC—Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). This has enabled organizations to capitalize on UGC to engage dynamically with all their customers and stakeholders. Innovative organizations, such as Marriott, Hilton, Easyjet, and British Airways took advantage of the emerging technologies early in order to improve their operational processes and enhance their communication with consumers and stakeholders. Recent studies, at both academic and professional levels, note that the modern traveler is more aware of the opportunities generated by the Internet, and therefore is more demanding (Buhalis and Law, 2008) in terms of information gathering and opportunities evaluation.

On one hand, tourism managers need to understand and be ready to manage the complexity generated by new technologies. Companies that are able to exploit technological tools to foster communication and engagement in a bidirectional way, leading to a satisfactory and profitable interaction between all the communication actors, will gain a substantial competitive advantage in the tourism arena. On the other hand, social media have empowered the consumers: travelers carefully review past tourism experiences of other travelers to make more informed decisions, relying both on official websites (e.g., destinations and hotels) and on unofficial ones (e.g., tripadvisor.com, blogs—Inversini and Buhalis, 2009). Electronic word-of-mouth (eWoM—Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004) can be defined as all informal communications directed at consumers through Internet-based technology related to the usage or characteristics of particular goods and services (Litvin et al., 2008). EWoM often contains emotional messages that can influence travelers’ decision-making processes (Inversini et al., 2009). EWoM communications are hosted and spread by social media and in certain blogs, social networks (such as facebook.com and twitter.com), and rich media social sites (such as YouTube.com and Instagram.com).

Additionally, in the hypercompetitive online tourism environment, travelers rely heavily on search engines to locate appropriate information on the Internet. Search engines display a series of relevant results after filtering the possible information that can be interesting for the traveler (Inversini and Buhalis, 2009). Social media are populating and driving search engine results because they are search-engine optimized (Hays, Page, and Buhalis, 2013). The rapid development of search engines (and meta-search engines) has influenced travelers’ use of technology for planning and experiencing (pre-experience and recalling the experience) their travels (Gretzel et al., 2006). Search engines are seen as the main gateway to online information. Ramsey (2007) estimated that 61 percent of adult Internet users conduct travel searches on the Web. Recent studies in the online information search field (Xiang et al., 2008) demonstrated that travelers spend time locating appropriate information on the Internet, checking different information providers (Inversini and Buhalis, 2009), before making online travel reservations (Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009). Online information search has become one of the most investigated fields of research for academics (Pan and Fesenmaier, 2006) due to its popularity among prospective travelers.

Finally, it is relevant to note the intrinsic characteristics of the travel and tourism brands. These brands can be understood as service brands—brands that are based on rational and emotional values (Chernatony and Christodoulides, 2004) and on the relationship among customers, organizations, and employees (Brodie, 2009) toward the fulfillment of promises. The experience-based economy (Pine and Gilmore, 1999) of the travel and tourism sector facilitates the generation of opinions and comments on experiences resulting from the fulfillment (or the lack thereof) of the promises made by the organizations (and their employees) and experienced by the travelers. The opinions and comments of informed tourists are available online for prospective travelers who are gathering information to book a tourism experience. This content, which reflects the complexity of the service brands, is generated by users who have already lived the reviewed experience found in the online tourism domain, thanks to search engines.

This chapter investigates tourism branding, identity, reputation, and word of mouth in the age of social media. After reviewing the relevant literature and some iconic case studies, it conceptualizes the e-branding online space, where the perception of the brand is the result of the interplay between official websites (supply side) and social media (demand- and supply-side).

The Evolution of E-tourism: From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

The ICTs’ revolution has had already profound implications for the tourism sector. Poon (1993) predicted that: “a whole system of ICTs is being rapidly diffused throughout the tourism industry and no player will escape ICTs’ impacts.” Buhalis (2003) suggests that e-tourism reflects the digitization of all processes and value chains in the tourism, travel, hospitality and catering industries. At the tactical level, it includes e-commerce and applies ICTs for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of the tourism organization. At the strategic level, e-tourism revolutionizes all business processes, the entire value chain as well as the strategic relationships of tourism organizations with all their stakeholders.

The e-tourism concept includes all business functions (e-commerce and e-marketing, e-finance and e-accounting, e-HRM, e-procurement, e-R and D, and e-production) as well as eStrategy, ePlanning and eManagement for all sectors of the tourism industry, including tourism, travel, transport, leisure, hospitality, principals, intermediaries and public sector organizations (Egger and Buhalis, 2008). Hence e-tourism bundles together three distinctive disciplines, namely, Business Management, Information Systems and Management, and Tourism (Buhalis, 2003). ICTs have a profound impact on the travel industry because they force this sector as a whole to rethink the way in which it organizes its business, values or norms of behavior and the way in which it educates its workforce (Buhalis, 1998; Buhalis and Law, 2008; Poon, 1993; Sheldon, 1997).

Actually, travel and tourism is a field where the smart use of technologies has always played a critical role. Historically it is possible to describe a trajectory of the technology evolution in this domain: from the development of Computer Reservation Systems (CRS—1970s) through the Global Distribution Systems (GDS—1980s) until the advent of the Internet (1990s) and social media in (2005), tourism managers have always been confronted with the rise of new developments that were helping—and somehow transforming—the whole industry (Buhalis and Law, 2008; Ip et al., 2011). The Internet, which can be seen as the last technological evolution in the field, enables travelers to access reliable and accurate information as well as to undertake reservations in a fraction of the time, cost, and inconvenience required by conventional methods. It provides access to transparent and easy to compare information on destinations, holiday packages, travel, lodging and leisure services, as well as about their real-time prices and availability.

Initially, the information available on the Internet was chaotic and loosely structured, mainly due to the immaturity of ICTs and the lack of any type of standardization. Furthermore, the industry was not prepared to embrace the changes required by the management of a 24/7 worldwide contact point (i.e., the website) and a 24/7 worldwide sales center (i.e., the reservations page—e.g., Card et al., 2003), mostly because of low readiness to the change (e.g., Murphy et al., 2006) and human-resources-related issues (Lam et al., 2007). Information search, defined as the possibility of locating correct and relevant travel and tourism information in the so-called online tourism domain (Xiang et al., 2008) has risen as research discipline. The online tourism domain, defined as the collection of links, domain names, and web pages that contain texts, images, and audio/video files related to travel and tourism (Pan and Fesenmaier, 2006; Xiang et al., 2008), refers to the amount of websites that are available around a given destination, that are related to the tourism industry. The online tourism domain conceptualization is based upon four different perspectives: (1) the tourism industry perspective that incorporates the composition of the tourism domain in terms of supply on the Internet (e.g., Leiper, 1979; Smith, 2009); (2) the symbolic representation perspective that focuses on the representation of tourism products and related experiences provided by the industry (e.g., Leiper, 1979); (3) the travel behavior perspective including the activities and the supporting systems at different stages of the travel experience (e.g., Crompton, 1992); and, (4) the travel information search perspective emphasizing the information sought to support travel experiences (e.g., Vogt and Fesenmaier, 1998). Xiang et al. (2008) underlined that only a tiny part of pages indexed in the search engine Google.com are indeed accessible for users. Among these pages a number of websites (domain duplicates) are dominating the results, as also demonstrated earlier by Wöber (2006). Internet users do use search engines as gateway to online information and they shape the way online travelers and tourism suppliers use the Internet.

Even if some sectors of the travel and tourism industry (e.g., hospitality) were reluctant and slow in adopting new technologies, nowadays it is widely recognized that proper use of technologies is a prerequisite for the success of the travel and tourism industry (Buhalis, 2003). Since mid-90s when the Internet emerged as new tool for marketing and selling tourism products (Werthner and Klein, 1999) tourism managers tried to catch up with the complex dynamics of the World Wide Web (WWW), designing, adopting, and optimizing websites, sales channels, in order to build a coherent web presence. The development of the Internet offered an unprecedented opportunity for distribution of multimedia information and interactivity between principals and consumers (Buhalis, 2003). The WWW’s interlinking structure enables the provision and packaging of similarly themed information, products, and services (Rabanser and Ricci, 2005). The Internet has enabled consumers to access this information rapidly. Increasingly the development of domain-specific search engines and meta-search engines such as Kelkoo and Kayak have introduced utter transparency in the marketplace (Wöber, 2006).

The rise of Web 2.0 and of social media enabled the development of UGC. Although some authors raised critics to Web 2.0 and social media—as for example the participation inequality model by Nielsen (2006) which, states that the actual heavy contributors of social media are 1 percent of the overall users—thanks to UGC, Web 2.0 and social media had a substantial impact on the travel and tourism domain. These emerged through review portals such as tripadvisor.com, social networks such as facebook.com and twitter.com, multimedia sharing websites such as panoramio.com, youtube.com, and instagram.com and blogs. This creates accessible content that increase the level of information available on a global basis (Gretzel and Yoo, 2008). Social media can be generally understood as Internet-based applications that encompasses media impressions created by consumers, typically informed by relevant experiences, and archived or shared online for easy access by other impressionable consumers (Blackshaw, 2006). Social media are important as they help spread the eWoM (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). Since social media were created users started to engage with these platforms sharing personal experiences in the form of (1) texts, (2) images, and (3) videos. ...