The pros and cons of digital marketing strategies: applications from the hotel industry

Abstract

Tourism is being expected to show a sustained annual growth of 4.4 % in the number of arrivals between 2010-2030 for the emerging markets (UNWTO, 2019). Considering that tourism is a multidimensional service system covering different actors and organizations, tourism marketing is one of the vital tools to take share of this growing market. Digital marketing strategies in tourism has been developing and applied by different actors in the sector. The tourism industry is one of the first service industries to adapt and use information and communication technologies (ICT) for promoting its services (Sadr, 2013). Increasingly it is evident that high-tech tourists and regions or enterprises meet in an electronic marketplace and communicate directly through electronic channels, eliminating the need for spatial concentration of production and distribution (Minghetti and Buhalis, 2010). However, tourism is not a clear-cut sector but an all-embracing and pervasive domain of service and industrial activities (Wahab and Cooper, 2001, p.5).Hotel industry follows the latest technology and tries to adapt to the new trends. This paper aims to propose digital marketing strategies in tourism and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these strategies. The research method is qualitative. Semi-structured interviews are done with marketing managers from 5 star hotels in Antalya. The findings point out that digital marketing has been being mostly used for “display advertising”, “pay per click” and “social media marketing”. The pros and cons of every application is shown. Better management of data, more automation and use of artificial intelligence and Internet of Things technologies may lead to better strategies in the future. UNESCO and WTO have certainly indicated that countries need to respond to new tourists’ demands and this response can be achieved by using innovative techniques offered by digitalization or new technology (Da Costa Liberato et al., 2018). The pros and cons of digital marketing strategies point out the necessary actions and applications that may be followed.