University of New Hampshire Scholars\u27 Repository
Abstract
Twitter has demanded a presence in company brands since its start up in 2008, including the hotel industry. As an up and coming marketing tool, the social media website is still new to both hotels and their guests. Observing the different strategies incorporated by luxury and midscale hotels, the paper provides explanations on how these two segments differ in utilizing Twitter. Through direct interviews with US luxury and midscale hotels and analyzing individual Twitter feeds, it was found that luxury hotels and their target market are much more active on Twitter than the midscale hotel segment. Implications suggest that although there is no current expectation from midscale hotel travelers to follow a Twitter feed, the rising presence of Twitter will demand midscale hotels to actively participate on the social media site in the near future
