Evaluation of Hotel Management Instagram Sharings with Content Analysis Method Within Social Media Marketing

Abstract

It is seen that usage of social media in order to communicate with consumers to have relation and to create awareness of brand has increased dramatically in tourism sector as well as in other sectors. There are some risks during buying process for travellers due to difficulty in deciding before consumption since tourism product depends on experience and abstract structure of service provided. Therefore, social media tools which provides high quality visualizations that supports communication efforts of hotel managements with consumers and making the service concrete become important. Depending on that, the main aim of this study examination of applications of hotel managements on Instagram as a photo based social media tool and analyzing whether there is a difference between their photo preferences depending on their type or not. Based on this aim, between 10-15 August, 2015, sharings of hotel managements which are within the best hotel category for Turkey advertised by TripAdvisor and which use Instagram are examined by content analysis method. Also chi-square is used to analyze whether there is a relationship between types of hotel managements and their sharings or not. Kruskal Wallis H is used in order to determine whether there is a relationship between content themes and interaction of followers with the management. Accoırding to results of the study, photo sharings of managements fall under 11 themes, it is seen that there are significant differences between sharings of city and coast hotels. Besides, some suggestions are offered for hotel managements at the end of the study.