Tourism is a phenomenon of contemporary society, being one of the economic sectors where information has an essential function and where the impact of social media had more evidence. Digital technologies are increasingly present in life and have radically changed the way people think, make decisions and interact. Consumers are more demanding and informed, supporting their buying decisions in the online world. These changes also have implications in the tourism sector and in the promotion of tourist destinations. Given this new paradigm, the local accommodation units, as the most recent accommodation modality, have registered a remarkable growth and due to the characteristics of the activity itself, have to accompany and adapt to this new reality. The present work intends to analyze how Local Accommodation units in Aveiro use the Internet, and in particular the applications of social media in their communication strategies, as well as the importance they give to this reality of the digital world.
TopIntroduction
Tourism is a phenomenon of contemporary society, being one of the economic sectors where information has an essential function and where the impact of social media had more evidence.
The digital world where we live today has transformed corporate communication as well as its strategies. Digital technologies are increasingly present in life (social, professional and personal) and have radically changed the way people think, make decisions and interact. Consumer/ tourist behaviour has become more flexible (more spontaneous, hybrids, technology fans), more experienced (informed, active), more independent (more adventurous and involved), have new values (seek unique, more real experiences and authentic), new lifestyles (more free time, travel more, make more short breaks) and have undergone demographic changes (more singles, smaller families). In this way, consumers are more demanding and informed, supporting their buying decisions more and more in the online world.
These changes also have implications in the tourism sector and in the promotion of tourist destinations, giving rise to the emergence of new intermediaries and a redefinition of the organizations’ strategies of (Buhalis & Licata, 2002). Traditionally, the promotion of tourism was done through conventional media. Currently, this trend has been declining, since consumers / tourists prefer to get the information they need online, using two major forms (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010): social media websites and search engines rather than using traditional tour operators or travel agencies.
Due to the increasing use of the Internet, mainly due to the exponential growth in the use of social media platforms and the influence of the content and opinions generated by their users, tourism organizations must define a strategy and select the appropriate digital marketing channels to each phase of the trip and target audience.
In recent years we have witnessing an exponential growth of accommodation, legally qualified in Portugal as Local Accommodation (LA] units. According to the National Registry of Local Accommodation (RNAL), between 2012 and 2016, as occurred an exponential growth of 637.6%, in the number of LA units.
One of the main factors contributing to the proliferation and success of the LA model is the easy contact between citizens around the world brought by the internet. Today, any property owner that wants to monetize it through temporary lease can use the internet to promote it, resorting to the various portals of LA, such as Airbnb, the FlipKey (owned by TripAdvisor), HomeAway or Roomorama. Portugal was the sixth most requested European country on Airbnb in the summer of 2017, accounting for 1,113 million reservations on platform accommodations between June and August (Macário, 2017). If, prior to globalization, this phenomenon represented only a marginal fringe of tourist flow, now is seen as a real competitor to traditional hospitality, with a growing weight in the sector as a whole.
Although it is recognized that marketing strategy of tourism organizations, and especially of these small accommodation units, should favour digital channels, scientific studies addressing the online presence of tourism organizations and especially LA units are incipient. Considering all the presented questions, the main objective of the present study is to analyse LA units online strategies, moreover, understand how they use online channels and, in particular the social media in their communication strategies.
To this end, was prepared an observation grid consisting of a set of parameters that were defined from the literature review, proceeded through direct observation to the analysis of the online presence of 239 LA units from the city of Aveiro1, the observation period occurred from October 7 to 21, 2018. The chapter is structured in three main sections. (i) the literature review, which focuses in the relevance digital marketing for tourism and hospitality, the social networks in tourism and hospitality from a business perspective; (ii) the methodology used in the study; and (iii) the conclusion and discussion of the results.