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0THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON TOURISM INDUSTRY
1Emil Hairov, 2Baykabilov Kamoliddin
1Student of "Silk Road" International University of Tourism and Cultural Heritage", 2teacher of Chinese language and culture Silk Road International University of Tourism and Cultural Heritage
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11218842
Nowadays human beings live in an era of technology, and it is impossible to imagine our lives without these innovations. They become a part of our lives and influence us greatly. Especially social media with its applications and platforms without which the modern tourism industry couldn't exist these days. And I would like to describe the impact of these modernizations on the tourism industry with the influence of different applications and platforms.
As mentioned above, social media has a crucial role in the tourism industry. And a good example of this is TripAdvisor. Digital platforms have also reached hotel ratings. The TripAdvisor platform has helped millions of users select and rate hotels based on their preferences, taste and budget.
TripAdvisor is one of the most popular platforms used by tourists during their vacations or other purposes in other countries to get quick and brief information about local area including history, surrounding region, hotels, entertainment, preferences of tourists and their views. There are 491 million users on TripAdvisor around the world which proves its enormous impact without any reference to articles. However, to strengthen the reliability of our project here is some information proving the power of this platform.
The study focuses on examining the influence of online travel communities, specifically TripAdvisor, on decision-making in Bahrain's cultural tourist industry's growth. Utilizing a qualitative approach, the research relies on secondary data extracted from visitor reviews on TripAdvisor.com. TripAdvisor, established in 2000 by Expedia, was chosen for its extensive coverage and recognized success in fostering peer interaction within the tourism sector (Twumas & Adu-Gyamfi, 2013; Buhalis & Law, 2008).
TripAdvisor users contribute reviews and scores (1 to 5) covering various aspects, such as overall satisfaction, sleep quality, cleanliness, price-quality ratio, location, accommodations, and services. Xie and associates (2015) investigated the impact of online consumer reviews on TripAdvisor on offline hotel bookings, highlighting the significance of factors like quality, quantity, consistency, and recency. Affordability, although crucial for selecting hotels, it usually has little effect on how satisfied guests are overall (Fernández-Barcala et al., 2009; Jeong and Jeon, 2008; Limberger et al., 2014). TripAdvisor's influence on hotel locations has been explored in studies like Cunningham et al.'s (2010), where strategic quality management was employed to avoid negative customer reviews. According to Verma et al. (2012), reading unfavorable internet reviews considerably lowers the possibility of making a hotel reservation, whereas reading positive ones raises the likelihood (7080%). Anderson (2012) noted a growing trend of consumers checking TripAdvisor reviews before hotel bookings, and higher average hotel ratings may permit charging elevated room prices without affecting occupancy levels.
III. Second Body Paragraph
As mentioned above, the impact of social media is very strong in the 21st century and will be part of any tourism industry in the future.
A good example of this is YouTube and its influence on tourism sector in Bulgaria.
After showing videos about the nature of Bulgaria, number of tourists increased significantly between 2014 and 2019.
Here is a bar chart showing the number of tourists between 2009 and 2021. As can be seen, the number was 5.95 million in 2014 and became 8.19 in 2019. It is obvious that YouTube videos played crucial role in promoting tourism of Bulgaria in these years. But you can see that there was a dramatic decrease in 2020 due to Covid-19 and again grow as it started recovering from pandemic hit.
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The advent of YouTube has significantly transformed the landscape of the tourism sector in Bulgaria, becoming a powerful influencer that shapes travelers' perceptions, inspires wanderlust, and serves as a dynamic platform for promoting the country's diverse attractions.
This topic sentence introduces the main idea that will be discussed in the paragraph— specifically, how YouTube has impacted the tourism sector in Bulgaria. It suggests that YouTube has played a transformative role by influencing traveler perceptions, sparking interest in travel, and serving as a promotional tool for Bulgaria's various attractions.
1. Supporting evidence from research
YouTube is a website where videos can be hosted. It was established in 2005, acquired by Google in 2006, and has had two billion visits in the past year. Every day, 122 million users access the platform. Based on Google data, this is the most used video hosting platform in Bulgaria, with 4.32 million profiles.
In Bulgaria, tourism plays a significant role in the nation's development. The tourist industry brings in BGN 3.7 billion in revenue in 2021, employing one person for every eleven (World travel and & tourism council, 2022).
The impact of social media on the supply and demand for travel has expanded during the past five years. The current article's author examines the popular social networks in Bulgaria as well as the general user traffic on them. It has been successful for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, and Twitter to digitize human communication. Thanks to these medium, people are able to make and keep more friendships these days. The beneficial growth of this kind of communication invariably results in a decline in face-to-face or real-time conversation.
IV. Third Body Paragraph
It is also important to note the fact that the social network also influences the perception and behavior of tourists themselves.
Obviously by watching many videos on the internet your mind builds and creates a personality about a country. And we all have relatives and friends with different personalities which make us behave with them properly as they do with us. The same do countries when we think about them, for example when an ordinary person thinks about Egypt the first thing which comes to his mind is pyramids, pharaohs and sphinx. Or when he thinks about France, it is obviously Paris, Eiffel tower and croissant. These all features of these countries we have in our minds due to social media and this is how it influences our perceptions of countries. Moreover, social media builds tourists' intention and behavior during the journey.
Picture 1. Social media's Role in the tourists' behavioral process Source: Adapted on Nindyta Aisyah Dwityas,2017
The intentions of tourists are frequently split into two stages of the actions of tourists. The first is the purpose to visit, which is expressed before to arriving at the location and the second is the intention to visit again in the future, which happens after the tourists have final destination (González-Rodríguez et al., 2016). A previous investigation by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) outlined the relationship between the behavioral intention and normative, evaluative, and situational elements that can be anticipated at the time of choosing a holiday destination or making a purchase. In According to research on tourism, a visitor's behavioral intention is their intended course of action for the future (Barlas, Mantis and Koustelios 2010), which can be characterized as a desire to go back and a readiness to suggest that others visit the location (Loncaric et al. 2016; Castro et al. 2007).
V. Fourth body paragraph
As mentioned above, social networks influenced people's preferences and perceptions and it also influenced the experience before, during and after the trip. (Picl)
Providers of tourism are realizing that, "ICT, when handled appropriately, can create enormous positive value for their companies" (Marchiori, Dedekind & Cantoni, 2010, p. 326). Milano (2010), as mentioned in Milano et al. (2011) in the book "The Impact of Social Media on the Destination Image Formation and Tourist Behavior," suggests three stages that are influential in the formation of the trip experience.
• Pre-Experience: Built on other people's travel stories, before travelling;
• Experience during Travel or Stay: With real time-shared experiences mainly via mobile phones;
• Post-Experience: Which disseminates comments, evaluations, emotions.
VI. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the text emphasizes the indispensable role of social networks in the contemporary tourism industry. It asserts that the symbiotic relationship between the two is crucial for attracting millions of global tourists. The text reviews the impact of various applications, including YouTube and TripAdvisor, providing examples and statistical comparisons over different years. The analysis underscores the interdependence of the tourism industry and social networks, projecting a future where they are inseparable entities, each vital to the existence of the other.
Considering the power of the social network, in conclusion, we can safely conclude that the modern tourism industry cannot exist without the social network and will be the key factor of this industry in attracting millions of tourists from all over the world. As part of this work, studies were conducted on applications and their impact, such as YouTube, TripAdvisor and others. Their influence is described, and examples are given with comparison using statistics from different years.
In the future, the tourism industry and the social network will be associated with each other when one of them is mentioned, since they cannot exist without each other.
REFERENCES
1. Implications of Social Media Use in Personal and Professional Settings Vladlena Benson Kingston Business School, Kingston University, UK Stephanie Morgan Kingston Business School, Kingston University, UK
2. Hotel Assessment through Social Media: The case of TripAdvisor La valoraciUn de los hoteles en los medios sociales: El caso de TripAdvisor Sebastian Molinillo University of Malaga, Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Business Management, Campus El Ejido, 29013
Malaga, Spain, smolinillo@uma.es JosE Luis XimEnez-de-Sandoval University of Malaga, Faculty of Tourism, Campus Teatinos, Malaga, Spain, joseluis.xs@uma.es Antonio Fernndez-Morales University of Malaga, Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Applied Economics, Campus El Ejido, 29013 Malaga, Spain, afdez@uma.es Andres Coca-Stefaniak University of Greenwich, Business School, Department of Marketing, Events and Tourism, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London SE10 9LS, United Kingdom,
3. The Impact of Social Media on the Destination Image Formation and Tourist Behavior Galina Ilieva - PhD University of Economics - Varna, Varna, Bulgaria
4. THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON ADVERTISING TOURISM SERVICES (IN THE EXAMPLE OF BULGARIA) Angel Stoykov1
