The Relationships between Social Media Adoption and Homestay Performance in Malaysia

Social media has become the most popular marketing tool in the tourism industry. It has been determined that the advent of social media has allowed tourists from all around the world to directly get in touch and communicate with tourism organizations despite their location. However, there is limited research on the adoption of social media as a marketing tool in the Homestay program. Therefore, Kampungstay and Homestay Association Malaysia (MKHA) in collaboration with Tourism Malaysia has developed a platform known as www.jomhomestay.my to promote the program. Despite this effort, the findings stated that the homestay program has limited resources for social media and a limited ability to recognize it. Thus, this paper is to examine the relationships between social media adoption and homestay performance. The originality of the study will act as a roadmap for future research, assisting in the creation of the most productive homestay business plan and providing empirical data for this research

The Adoption of Internet Technologies by Independent Hotels in the UK

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/670 on 27.02.2017 by CS (TIS)The growth of the technology and its range of possible uses have made it a necessity for independent hoteliers to examine their use of the internet, specifically its effectiveness for marketing and distribution purposes. It is widely recognised that the independent hotel sector makes up the bulk of the hotel industry in the UK and often do not have the resources or desire to keep up with new technologies. This study scrutinizes, evaluates and establishes the factors that influence the decision to adopt a range of internet technologies for marketing and distribution within the UK Independent hotel sector. The conceptual framework of this study is underpinned by Davis's Technology Acceptance Model (1989) and Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations model (1995). The study's findings have confirmed, challenged and extended these two theories. Critically, it has established that the ease-of-use of a technology and its affordability do not affect hoteliers' deployment decisions, when numerous studies have suggested otherwise. The study also revealed that the hotel sector as a whole had not only expanded the range of internet technologies adopted, but the proportion of adopters had also increased. A series of qualitative exploratory interviews were carried out and analysed to inform a larger quantitative survey. Survey data was collected from 408 independent hoteliers and analysed to contribute to the conceptual development of a taxonomy. In the process, hypotheses testing, regression, discriminant and cluster analysis were carried out, linking various hotel characteristics, hotelier perceptions and their propensity to deploy internet technology for marketing and distribution. The core of the developed taxonomy illustrated three groups of hoteliers: the internet application (IA) reticent; the IA realist; and the IA rationalist. This taxonomy, supported by a more precise profile and definition of independent hoteliers, facilitated the identification of managerial implications for various stakeholders. A significant implication of the study inferred that travel intermediaries' will continue to have a sustained stronghold on independent hoteliers