Beyond 140 characters: Marketing effectiveness of hotel Twitter accounts in Saudi Arabia

Over the past decade, the rapid advancement of social media (SM) and concurrent economic conditions created a remarkable proliferation of SM users. SM not only revolutionized individuals’ lifestyles but also transformed how businesses communicate and interact with their consumers. Twitter is one of the most popular SM platforms. Twitter was purposely selected for this study because it is one of the fastest growing SM platforms (The Statistics Portal, 2015). Moreover, marketers consider Twitter the second-most-commonly used SM platform, after Facebook (Stelzner, 2014). While the effects of Facebook on various aspects of business have been studied extensively in the academic and trade literature, Twitter gets significantly less attention from the academy and the hospitality industry. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of marketing and advertising via Twitter on hotels’ marketing effectiveness, which, in turn, may lead to enhanced hotel performance. The study focused on the market of Saudi Arabia. Specifically, this study classified by format (e.g. video, photo, and text) and by content (e.g. brand, product, and engagement) the tweets posted by Saudi hotels. The study used the work of Leung (2012) as an investigative framework to examine the marketing effectiveness of hotel Twitter accounts in Saudi Arabia. The study employed content analysis as a pre-test and a quantitative research design in the formation of an online survey with an embedded experiment as the main study. Content analysis was applied in exploring the format and the content of hotels’ tweets to identify the most popular methods used by Saudi hotels to deliver Twitter messages. Quantitative data were collected via an online survey that investigated Saudi consumers’ perspectives toward effective tweets using a simulated hotel Twitter account. The findings suggest that consumers’ attitudes toward hotels’ tweets have positive effects on their attitudes toward the Twitter accounts, which, in turn, positively affect their attitudes toward the hotels’ brands and, ultimately, increase positive electronic word of mouth and consumers’ intent to book. Regarding the tweets’ format and content, however, the results were contrary to predictions. This study found that when compared to a plain-text tweet, adding a photo in a tweet did not have a significant effect on consumers’ attitudes toward that tweet. Additionally, when compared to a tweet that included brand information, adding information about products/services in a tweet did not have a significant effect on consumers’ attitudes toward that tweet. Adding a hyperlink and providing space for customer engagement negatively affected attitudes toward hotels’ tweets. Overall, it can be concluded that hoteliers need to find ways to use SM to enhance their guests’ perceptions of their brands. One of the most effective strategies to meet and exceed guests’ expectations is to provide high-quality customer service and advanced interactive technology. This study shows that when consumers have positive attitudes toward hotels’ tweets and Twitter accounts, it ultimately translates into positive attitudes toward their brands, intentions to book rooms, and the spread of positive electronic word of mouth.