Measuring the hoteliers’ interactive engagement through social media

Abstract

The hospitality businesses are increasingly using the interactive technologies to promote their services and to engage with online prospects. Therefore, this study explores the hospitality executives’ stance toward the acceptance and use of social media for marketing purposes. The methodology relied on valid and reliable measures, including; the Technology Acceptance Model’s ‘perceived usefulness’ and ‘ease of use’ of technology, as well as the Theory of Planned Behavior’s ‘social influences’ and ‘behavioral intention’. Moreover, it adapted other constructs that were previously used to measure ‘interactive engagement’ and ‘pace of technological innovation’. The research model investigated whether these constructs had a significant effect on the participants’ intention to use social media for interactive engagement. The results have supported the scales’ content validity and the structural equations modeling approach has reported a satisfactory fit for this study’s research model. The findings indicated that there were highly significant, direct and indirect effects from the exogenous variables, particularly from the perceived usefulness and social influences that were predicting the hospitality owner-managers’ behavioral intentions to use social media. The individuals’ utilitarian motives to use the social media were clearly evidenced as they perceived the usefulness of the social media. They also indicated that they were influenced by their colleagues or competitors. Notwithstanding, there were significant influences from the demographic variables, including age, gender and experiences that moderated these relationships. This research model has integrated previously tried and tested measures relating to the acceptance and use of technology. In sum, this study reported that the younger, female respondents were more likely to use the social media to engage with online prospects, when compared with their older counterparts. In conclusion, this contribution identifies its limitations and suggests possible research avenues to academia.