The Influence of Social Media Marketing on Customers’ Choice of Hotels in Mauritius

Abstract

Social media has revolutionized business transactions and marketing strategies in various organizations, in which hotel industries is not let out. Organizations can now communicate with their customers directly via social media channels and seal transactions online with them without being in touch physically. In Mauritius, hotel business is a lucrative one and customers prefer to use social media platform like Facebook and TripAdvisor to search for hotel information. The present study examines the effect of social media marketing on customers’ choice of hotel in Mauritius. A total number of 100 participants were involved in this study. The findings show that customers are influenced by recommendation of others and the hotel fan pages on social media platforms. Furthermore, most customers’ decision were influenced by hotels advertising on social media platforms and the majority of the participants read online reviews quite often and positive reviews in turn influence customer’s decision making. Hotels should update their web and social media pages regularly by posting relevant content so that customers will be well informed; by doing so, the hotel will increase customers’ engagement on social media.