How Russian Premium Hotels Utilize Social Media and How Their Customers Use Social Media

How Russian Premium Hotels
Utilize Social Media and how their

Customers use Social Media.
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Contents Page 10,000 words
Abstract....................................................................................................................... 3
1. Introduction............................................................................................................ 4
1.1. Research background and context.......................................................................4
1.2. Background information..................................................................................... 7
1.3. Research aim and research question.................................................................16
2. Literature review................................................................................................... 17
2.1. Social Media as a Powerful and Effective business tool........................................17
2.2. Social media in hospitality: new opportunities......................................................17
2.3. Prominent research on social media in hospitality................................................19
2.4. Prominent research on social media in hotel industry in particular..........................20
2.5. Social Media and Stages of Travel.....................................................................21
2.6. Social Media and Premium Hotels.....................................................................27
2.7. Social Media and Consumer Behaviour among Hotel Customers in Russia.............28
2.8. Literature review and questions.........................................................................29
3. Methodology......................................................................................................... 30
3.1. Research Philosophy....................................................................................... 30
3.2. Research Approach......................................................................................... 30
3.3. Research Sampling......................................................................................... 31
3.4. Ethics Issues.................................................................................................. 33
3.5. Validity and Reliability...................................................................................... 34
4. Results................................................................................................................ 35
4.1. Interview results.............................................................................................. 35
4.1.1. Border between online marketing and online promotion and social media
management........................................................................................................ 35
4.1.2. OTAs, aggregator services and booking.......................................................36
4.1.3. Social Media/Network Services...................................................................36
4.1.4. Responsibility for Social Media strategy.......................................................37
4.1.5. Measurement Tools...................................................................................38
4.1.6. Profile of Consumers................................................................................. 38
4.2. Survey results................................................................................................. 38
5. Discussion............................................................................................................ 43
6. Conclusions.......................................................................................................... 45
References................................................................................................................. 47
Appendix.................................................................................................................... 57
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Abstract
The introduction revealed the problem of decreasing loyalty in the hotel industry, while social
media can improve it and also boost sales. Increasing attention is paid to the topic of social
media and user-generated content (UGC) in hospitality. Better management of social media can
bring additional competitive advantage, however, many hotels underuse this. Russian hotel
industry has a potential of growth and own peculiarities, and the study is thus interesting.
The research question is How social media/networks help Russian premium hotels to
alter the consumer behaviour and how their customers use social media?.
The research uses the combination of qualitative data (interviews with hotel
representatives and social media experts) and quantitative data (survey of Russian
hotel guests). The results show that online marketing and social media management
are usually not separated activity among Russian hotels. Hotels actively use prominent
foreign and local OTAs. The major focus in made on Facebook, though some focus on
Vkontakte as it helps to bring local travellers. Most of the hotels avoid outsourcing social
media management outside the company. Tracking the success of social media activity
can be challenging. For business travellers and non-individual travellers, social media
marketing activity can be less effective. Facebook is the most popular platform among
the target audience. The most important factor during the selection are average rating of
a hotel.
The discussion part answers six research questions formulated after the literature review.
Seven major problems in social media management are revealed including the small correlation
between social media activity and sales, poor social media account management, poorer
utilisation of social media compared to hotels and economy brands, lack of effective
communication and poor use of visual content. A five-step system to address these issues are
presented, it starts with the creation of remarkable experience and finishes with the integration
of online reviews into the performance appraisal system.
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1. Introduction
1.1. Research background and context
Nowadays hospitality industry suffers from vanishing loyalty of its customers, as the
result of more flexible approaches to booking and travelling, thanks to new online
distribution channels and enhanced customer awareness of all the alternatives
(Hotelmarketing, 2011; Watabe, 2016). Loyalty programs have become commoditized
nowadays and become less effective; but the use of new online channels, including
social media, might help in becoming more customer-centric, improving the guest
experience and promoting two-way conversation, all this can alleviate the negative
consequences of vanishing loyalty (Watabe, 2016). Other evident trends are increasing
travel experience and travel frequency of customers, amid decreasing risk tolerance
and loyalty but increasing flexibility and critical consciousness of hotel guests (Chehimi,
2013).
Meanwhile, technology and innovation agenda remains a crucial trend for the hospitality
sector as for 2016; online tools can help to attract guests from all over the world, while
the effective and successful utilization of social media/networks and its integration with
enterprise software brings innovators huge boosts of completive advantage and
profitability (EY, 2016). We are living in the age of disintermediation in tourism when
new hybrid online distribution channels help users do to order tours, book rooms and air
tickets via localised services of global online services (Thakran and Verma, 2013).
Social media helps hotels to maintain the continuing communication with customers to
develop positive and profitable relationship (Leue et al., 2013). Social media can
improve customer engagement, which in term leads to higher loyalty or purchase
intention (Harrigan et al., 2017). Thus, social media became an important issue for the
hospitality industry and for majority of the international hotel companies around the
world (Benea, 2014). The analysis and interpretation of UGC (user-generated content)
is the part of social media strategy; it became an effective method for hotels to show the
unidentified positives and negatives and improve customer experience (Harris, 2016).
Since 2009-2010, social media and UGC from review websites, such as TripAdvisor,
became ubiquitous both in developed and emerging markets (WTM, 2015). Social
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media can improve customer experience given the increase of young customers;
majority the millennials do not participate in any hotel loyalty programs, however, major
part of them say they are very likely to be engaged by social media and UGC (Short,
2015). Young consumers of tourist products are also among the most perceptive and
effective users of social media in their decision-making process, they are early
adopters, thus, the attention should be paid to the engagement of young consumers
(Bizirgianni and Dionysopoulou, 2013).
Academic studies analysis reveal that the consumer behaviour and interaction with
social media and UGC in the industry can be separated into different stages; first is the
study of alternatives and decision-making process before the purchase, then the
communication and use of social media during the stay and sharing content after the
stay. Considering the first stage, for most of the consumers, the hotel stay cannot be
considered as a low-involvement purchase, thus consumers conduct at least a small
research before they finally make the decision over the hotel to choose (Kolb, 2006;
Bowie and Buttle, 2013). Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and information/data from
social media are considered as credible sources during this research (Ladhari and
Michaud, 2015; Yen et al., 2015). Better management of social media accounts/pages
leads to the greater success of a hotel because of better comprehension of customer
wants and desires and more effective and efficient promotion (Cantallops and Salvi,
2014; Greenhalgh, 2014). Effective management of social media and great social media
marketing are among the dozen of major antecedents of hotel brand experience (HBE),
along with such factors as cleanliness and decor, attractive design, the level of service
and hotel location (Khan and Rahman, 2016). Effective management of social media
does change the behaviour of customers during their decision-making process (Leung,
2013). Similarly, Andrades and Dimanche (2015) notice the growing importance of
social media in the promotion of hotels; however, they note the major share of bookings
is made without the individual decision-making process, either by companies for
business travellers or by tourist agency services.
Tse (2013) notices there are few major reasons why how a hotel effectively uses online
and social media promotion. First is the use of the effective, functional and attractive
website, coupled with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Second is the effective work
with Online Travel Agents (OTA), who are the major sources of new customers (Tse,
2013). The successful hotel uses five major OTAs given its worldwide targeting,
Agoda.com and Booking.com mostly focused on Asia-Pacific, Orbitz.com mostly
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focused on North America and Europe, Hotel.com is effective in emerging markets and
Expedia.com has global targeting. The successful hotels use excessively well-targeted
advertising in social media, mostly on Facebook and Twitter, and are able to encourage
the repeat visitors to chose their hotel using Facebook page and targeted advertising
(Tse, 2013). One important element of the strategy is the encouragement to make
comments about travel experience on OTA websites (i.e. TripAdvisor.com and
Hotel.com).
Meanwhile, many of them lack well-designed and complete strategy on social media
management, a major share of hotels have poor management of social media that does
not lead to greater engagement, nor it improves customer satisfaction or retention rates
(Cognizant, 2015). Hotels often confuse and mix elements of digital marketing, online
promotion and social media marketing/management (Milestone, 2015; Piktoria, 2016).
Another important issue is deciding who holds the responsibility for online and social
media interactions, and should it be outsourced or managed internally (Nee, 2016). The
additional important question is how to evaluate the success of social media strategy
employed by the hotel (Milovi, 2012; Kim et al., 2015). Hotels also need good and well-
analysed case studies to follow effective strategic and copy some effective tools,
particularly in emerging markets (Sigala et al., 2012).
In one emerging market, - Russia, current weak rouble means that the larger share of
local travellers, while foreign tourists will be attracted by affordable prices; upcoming
sport events, such as Confederation Cup 2017 and FIFA WC in 2018 also mean
increased opportunities for Russian hotel industry (Stupachenko, 2016; Euromonitor,
2016). However, Russian hotels, particularly premium ones, are considered as rather
bad in managing social media in promotion and attraction of guests (Euromonitor,
2016). The literature review also shows there are at least noticeable if not crucial
differences in how social media is used by hotel customers that depend on the region.
The studies on hospitality marketing indicates that research is highly concentrated in
the developed world, which means the distortion of the knowledge about how certain
phenomena (including social media marketing) work in emerging markets (Nunkoo et
al., 2013). Taking into account the relatively low number of studies of social media in the
hotel industry of Russia (Kazakov, 2014), and interest of the researcher in the Russian
premium hotel industry, the research will analyse the topic of social media and
behaviour of the consumers of Russian premium hotels.
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1.2. Background information
The large share of people all over the world now uses social media. Currently, there are
about two billion of users worldwide, the number is forecasted to achieve 3 billion by
2020 (Statista, 2016a; Figure 1)
Figure 1. Number of users worldwide from 201- to 2020 (Statista, 2016a)

The most popular social network service (SNS) is Facebook, 1.7 billion of users;
Russian Vkontakte is also popular with about 100 million of users (Statista, 2016b;
Figure 2).
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Figure 2. Most famous social network sites (SNSs) worldwide as for September 2016,
based on the information about active users (millions) (Statista, 2016b)
Youtube is also often used as a popular social media platform to share the content on
travel; it now has more than 1,100 million of users (Muruganandam, 2016). TripAdvisor,
worlds largest travel site, has 390 million of visitors per month (TripAdvisor, 2016).
TripAdvisor has an influence decision-making process even for older customers
(Statista, 2016f).
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Figure 3. Influence of Tripadvistor on decision-making process of travelers; worldwide
survey (Statista, 2016f)
As the popularity of social media increased, they started to be an effective marketing
tool for large business all over the world (Russell, 2013). As for 2016, at least 63% of
marketers plan on increasing their use of these social networks (SNSs), with major
focus made on Facebook, however, many respondents not sure about the effectiveness
of their spending (Stelzner, 2016). Digital market for hotel booking is growing rapidly, the
revenue is expected to achieve the level of $100 billion, and most revenue is generated
in the U.S. ($38 billion), while the average revenue per user is about $300 (Statista,
2016c; Figure 4).
Figure 4. Revenue in Hotel segment of global digital market and major markets: U.S.,
China, France Brazil and Russia. (Statista, 2016c)
The number of users of hotel booking and online travel agency services is growing
rapidly, however, the average revenue per user (ARPU) decreases given the higher
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competition for customers and increasing democratization and globalisation (including
on emerging markets) of services (Statista, 2016c; Figures 5-6).
Figure 5. Number of users of online hotel-related services, and Figure 6 - the average
revenue per user in hotel segment of global digital market (Statista, 2016c).
Meanwhile, the revenue of online travel booking services is growing fast and expected
to achieve the level of $268 billion by 2020 (Statista, 2016d). In 2014, the most popular
travel booking sites were Booking.com and TripAdvisor family portals (Statista, 2016e;
Figures 7-8)
Figure 7. Revenue in the Online Travel Booking market. (Statista, 2016d)
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Figure 8. Most popular travel booking services globally (Statista, 2016e)
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Considering Russia in particular, in late 2014, more than 46% of total Russian
population, or more than 65 million of people had an active account with any social
network, the most popular was Vkontakte (VK) (Statista, 2016g; Figure 9).
Figure 9. Penetration of SNSs in Russia according to Statista (2016g).
According to another source, in early 2016, the most popular social networks are
Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki (Classmates) and Facebook, however, the most active are
users of vKontakte, Intagram, Facebook and Twitter (RussianSearchTips, 2016; Figures
10-11).
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Figure 10. Most popular social networks in Russia (RussianSearchTips, 2016)
Figure 11. Most actively used social networks in Russia (RussianSearchTips, 2016)
Odnoklassniki and Moy Meer (My World) are popular among older users with lower
income (RussianSearchTips, 2016; Figure 12).
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Figure 12, Demographic of users of SNSs (RussianSearchTips, 2016)
Odnoklassnikis user base is more international than VK has, the major share of the
users are from former Soviet states, hence come the lower income of an average user
(Watson, 2016). While Vkontakte have nearly double the engagement of Facebook,
local experts suggest using Facebook platform, as Russian Facebook users tend to be
wealthier, and live in major metropolitan areas such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg
making it more attractive for premium segment advertisers (Watson, 2016). Russian
Facebook users has more online shoppers that are active. Considering the total number
of online shoppers, 42 million of Russian people are expected to buy goods and
services online, while the number of expected to achieve 57 million in 2020 (Statista,
2016h). Statista (2016i) states that online revenue of Hotel segment is expected to
grow fast in Russia, from $3.8 billion in 2015 to $7.8 billion in 2020; however, major
share of the revenue is booking of foreign hotel rooms (Figure 13). The forecasts are
supported by the expectation of economic growth and further growth of internet and
smartphone penetration (Statista, 2016i; Figure 14).
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Figure 13. Revenue in Hotel segment of Russian digital market (Statista, 2016i)
Figure 14. Statistics on Russian population, economic growth, internet and smartphone
penetration (Statista, 2016i)
In general, all industry experts note that effective management of social media can bring
travel companies a huge boost of competitive performance, acting during all three
stages of the travel (Deloitte, 2015). As mentioned earlier, higher-involvement services,
including premium hotel booking, require at least a small research, and UGC and social
media content does affect the decision-making process (Tussyadiah, 2011). The trend
of increasing emphasis on this topic in hospitality industry is evident among the
academic researchers (Leung 2013; 2015).
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1.3. Research aim and research question
The major research aim is to study how social media/networks affect consumer of the
local premium hotel industry, as there is a lack of studies on how Russian premium
hotels improve their performance using better social media/social networks strategies.
The research question is presented:
How social media/networks help Russian premium hotels to alter the consumer
behaviour and how their customers use social media?
The following research objectives were formulated based on the research question
(Figure 15):
Figure 15. Research objectives
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2. Literature review
2.1. Social Media as a Powerful and Effective business tool

Historically, social network is the term predominantly used in sociology and social
studies (Ellison, 2007). The modern term mostly embraces prominent online SNS
(social network services), examples are Twitter or Instagram app. As social network
websites became popular, the researchers paid an increasing attention to it (Kaplan,
2015). SNSs and social media are considered as the services where users could share
information of their interest, with their offline and online friends and followers; however,
they also became a marketing tool of great power and strength. Management of social
media, or marketing (as the part of social media management) became an effective
method to gather and analyse data on consumer behaviour and promote own products
and services (Tutan and Solomone, 2014).
Growing popularity of SNSs resulted in a growing utilisation of social media by

marketers other business researchers paid towards social networks and social media in
general . Social media is interrelated with the phenomenon of user-generated content
(UGC) (KapIan and Haenleine, 2012). Social media marketing (and social media
management - as a communication tool) uses the power of social media platforms,
user-generated content, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) to promote products and
services and gain intelligence on consumer behaviour (Tuten and Haenlein, 2012).
2.2. Social media in hospitality: new opportunities
The beginning new digital media, social media (Web 2.0 media) increased the number
of ways customers can interact with each other share their content, while hospitality
industry benefited from the new ways to promote the products, engage the customer
base and gain better understanding of consumer behaviour (Buhylis and Lawe, 2008).
Indeed, considering the engagement factor, social media boosts customer engagement
in the tourism industry; Harrigan et al. (2017) propose their own customer engagement
scale in the context of social media. While social media is a great factor in the decision-
making in travel, Amaro (2016) et al. notice that little was made to cluster the travels
based on their use of social media. They note that fully engaged social media users are
younger users who are very active in social networks. To reveal the level of engagement
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and ROI, business intelligence tools are implemented. Analysis of social media is a very
effective way of business intelligence; hotel reviews, for example, might reveal the flows
in services while user-generated content may help in developing new service packages
(Korte et al., 2013). Booking systems and CRMs are now mainly integrated with
enterprise software, they are cloud-based, and thus there are growing opportunities for
a very close integration of social media management systems with enterprise software
or cloud-based solutions for hotels or other hospitality companies (de Rosario, 2013;
Chehimi, 2013).
Denizci Guillet et al. (2016) notice that social media marketing can be evaluated in the
number of ways, with four social media zones leading to four major areas of social
media marketing and six major ways to evaluate social media in hospitality, as the
following Figure 16 shows.
Figure 16. Four major areas of social media marketing according to Denizci Guillet et al.
(2016)
Denizci Guillet et al. (2016) show how 6Is social media monitoring framework
dimensions by can be divided into sub-dimensions in case of hotels (Figure 17).
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Figure 17. Subdivision of 6Is (Denizci Guillet et al., 2016)
2.3. Prominent research on social media in hospitality

The phenomenon of social media and electronic word-of-mouth is rather new and
developing rapidly, thus the studies dated before 2009 may often be considered as
outdated (Tutan and Solomone, 2014). On the other hand, different studies conducted
after 2008-2010 were carefully analysed to understand the context of this research and
to use some of the theories and frameworks they implement. There is an evident
increase in the attention to social media, eWOM and online promotion methods
implemented by hospitality industry (Xian and Gretzelle, 2010; Leung et al., 2013). One
prominent area is the use SMM and information from search engines to predict the
tourism demand and major needs and requirements of the customers in hospitality
industry (Sigala et al., 2012; Li et al., 2017). Latest developments in big data analysis
helps to gain better insights from information gained thanks to social media (Fuchs et
al., 2014; Xiang et al., 2015). The literature reviews by Leung et al. (2013) and Lee et al.
(2015) helped to gain additional insights on the topic and research methods to be used.
These two reviews show that mixed methodology can help in better understanding of
the topic in local contexts, particularly when focused on finding customer wants and
desires.
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2.4. Prominent research on social media in hotel industry in particular
A huge boom of studies on social media in hotel industry started in the 2010s, with
major prominent studies contributed to this research or contributed to the models and
frameworks to be used in this study. Indeed, Zeng and Gerritsen (2014) highlight the
growing prominence of the topic in tourism since the 2010s. Two major areas are
information search and decision-making; two other prominent topics are promotion and
advertising via social media and best practices for communication with consumers
(Zeng and Gerritsen, 2014). Zeng and Gerritsen (2014) concludes that despite a
growing number of articles, the topic is still in its infancy, as many local studies yet to be
conducted.
A study by Chan and Guillet (2011) revealed that an average hotel is ineffective in using
social media to study the consumer behaviour and learning about their target audience,
the effective combination of online services, SEO and social media interlinkage is
required. Hsu (2012) revealed the problem of language barriers, which often leads to
lower connectivity and poor communication of potential and previous customers. Ong
(2012) find out how the decision-making is done using online reviews via Online Travel
Agents (OTA), average score just helps to narrow down the choices, the sensitivity to
negative reviews is high. Verma et al. (2012) revealed the difference between business
travellers and leisure travellers, first prefer recommendations of their company, and
second use the recommendations from friends and colleagues and online reviews.
Wilson et al. (2012) noted the difference in usage patterns SNSs and OTAs among the
visitors from different countries, which should be taken into account. Ayeh et al. (2014)
note that love of the same means a different level of source credibility and attitude.
Barreda and Bilgihan (2013) note that positive reviews and positive word-of-mouth are
mostly sparkled by service personnel and quality of service in general, while negative
are related to cleanness and issues with the real prices. The destination itself might be
important, as it influences the WOM and average rating (Bulchand-Gidumal et al.,
2013). The size of the hotel is also important, larger hotels can spend on social media
excessively, while small hotels can use personal approach, medium-sized hotels might
be the poor performance according to this approach (Escobar-Rodriguez and Carvajal-
Trujillo, 2013). The average rating score increases with the number of total reviews of
the hotels, positive eWOM is more prominent among the hotels that were reviewed
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most (Melian-Gonzalez et al., 2013). However, Kim et al. (2015) notice that generally
the total number of reviews do not influence hotel performance as the average rating is
more important. Meanwhile, the study by Levy et al. (2013) show that online reviews
and social media mentions should be used as the tool for market research and service
recovery opportunity; the hotels with highest ratings are among those who respond to
online complaints most and in a prompt manner. Nusair et al. (2013) study the
Generation Y travellers, noticing that social media is crucial for them, they also very
sensitive to online reviews and eWOM. Phelan et al. (2013) suggest that despite the
rise of social media, hotels are very ineffective in promoting using them, as
underutilization is evident even in developed markets. However, Zhou et al. (2014)
notice that studies in emerging markets are generally consistent with studies
undertaken in western contexts, however, certain peculiarities exist. Inversini and
Masiero (2014) highlight the importance of finding effective personnel who would be
effective in online promotion, online booking, social media and dealing with online
complaints. A recent study by Leung et al. (2016) show that positive social media
experience is an antecedent of following a social media page, which leads to higher
intention to book and recommend is later. Another recent study by Aluri et al. (2016)
hotel website with embedded social media usually have the higher level of perceived
informativeness, perceived enjoyment, and perceived social benefits and well-
developed website-social media interaction leads to higher travel satisfaction and
purchase intentions. Raab et al. (2016) studies how different communication style used
in social media affects customer loyalty and partially, purchase intention in the case of
hotels; friendly and in some way informal communication is far more effective than
professional.
2.5. Social Media and Stages of Travel

This research is largely based on the notion of three major stages in travelling, as each
stages has own peculiarities in terms of consumer behaviour and interaction with social
media in particular, this should be taken into account by hotels (Euromonitor, 2011;
Figure 18).
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Figure 18. Social Media and Consumer behaviour in case of hospitality industry
According to different studies, the vast majority of travellers, particularly leisure

independent travellers, utilize search engine machines during their planning process
(Sigala et al., 2012). However, less than 20-25% use social media during the planning
process, if we exclude the review websites; though the share is growing rapidly (Xiang
and Gretzel, 2010; Sigala et al., 2012). Nevertheless, social media and review services
in particular, are crucial to the making decision over the hotel. Effective management of
social media thus leads to higher revenues in the premium segment (Kim et al., 2015).
There is a strong and evident interlinkage between the use of search engine machines
and social media in the selection process of tourist products, search engine optimisation
can be thus considered as the part of social media management strategy (Xiang and
Gretzel, 2010). Meanwhile, Murphy and Chen (2014) analyse the information sources
that are used in the consumer search and decision-making particularly at the pre-
purchase hotel search process. According to their research, online travel agencies are
often more relevant than both search engines and travel-related social media, based on
the number of pages viewed. Online search engines and OTAs are widely used in the
early stage of purchase, then social media pages and brand website, in many cases
customers go back to OTA to book a room (Verma et al., 2012).
Ayeh et al. (2014) note that during the first stage, consumers tend to trust electronic
WOM from specialised services that have a system to control the trustworthiness and
honesty of reviews, the most notable example is TripAdvisor, where credibility of user
reviews is as high as the WOM from close friends or from close relatives. Meanwhile,
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Ladhari and Michaud (2015) say that comments generated on Facebook has a huge
impact on the decision-making process in hotel booking, however, they greatest impact
is made when the Facebook activity is generated by the friends of surveyed. The user
satisfaction with the hotels Facebook page does lead to higher chances of selecting
particular hotel, most important factors are availability of necessary information and
ability to communicate, entertainment and social interaction are not important factors
(Choi et al., 2015). The study by Leung and Tanford (2016) proves that the Facebook
fans intentions to like (join) hotel pages are correlated with the perceived functional
and psychological benefits.
Casalo et al. (2015) notice that booking behaviour is growingly influenced by online
ratings and eWOM; the most impact is made by famous online travel communities (e.g.,
TripAdvisor). Similarly, Tussyadiah (2011) notices the crucial role of user-generated
contente (UGC) during the selection process by travellers. However, users of
TripAdvisor tend to be extreme in their reviews (excellent and terrible are more
frequent), terrible reviews may be however changed by fast response of the hotel
(Fong et al., 2016). Experienced users, however, tend to give moderate marks, and not
extremely high or extremely low (Schuckert et al., 2016). Travellers trust TripAdvisor
because of several major factors, most important is perceived information quality that
leads to higher credibility and perceived website quality, the moderator groups are
crucial in the success of this service (Filieri et al., 2015). Word-of-mouth thus becomes
a crucial factor in the promotion of tourism services and tourism products, however its
management can be challenging (Buhalis and Inversini, 2014; Yang, 2014).
In general, the intention of booking is positively influenced by consumers commitment,

trust and positive attitude towards hotel, other important factors are perceived
usefulness, ease of use and security, in addition to ability to communicated and
perceived shared values (Agag and El-Masry, 2016). While most of the consumers use
PCs and laptops (which is essentially the same) during their searching and booking
process, the growing number of users tend to use tables and mobile devices, meaning
online travel agents (OTAs) and search engines and hotels themselves have to adapt to
this trend (Murphy et al., 2016). Wang et al. (2015) suggest that in website, the
perceived hotel website quality leads to higher trust in its online capabilities, named as
eTrust, the higher eTrust is associated with higher online booking intentions. Unlike
local food and drink places, personal approach in managing social network pages may
not help hotels, - being friends with a small hotels does not lead to higher sales (Syed-
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Ahmad and Murphy, 2010). Advertising using social media can be very helpful in
promoting the advertising awareness, which in turn does leads to higher travel
intentions (Hennessey et al., 2010).
Considering the second stage, modern consumers are eager to share their opinions and
information about travel without any delay; apart from conspicuous consumption, the
major reasons is the ability to share and express oneself, acting as a journalist,
reporter, producer, influencer, social advisor, or marketing pioneer (Huang et al., 2010).
While Facebook and Instagram is often used as the part of conspicuous consumption,
TripAdvisor and other review sites are largely used for altruistic and community-related
motivations, hence come high trust in these services (Munar and Jacobsen, 2014).
Conspicuous pro-social behaviour in social media can be utilized by hotels wishing to
promote themselves online (Choi and Seo, 2017). Two-way interaction before and
during travel leads to better WOM later, Kim and Hardin (2010) state that major
antecedents of positive Word-of-Mouth are improved two-way communication with
customers and ability to co-create servicescape with customers (Figure19)
Figure 19. Co-creation of servicescape with customers (Kim and Hardin, 2010)
Considering user-generated data and word-of-mouth, it is evident that first stage in
Euromonitors model is interrelated with third; customers share their experience via
user-generated data (reviews, posts, photos) while potential customers during the first
stage use this information in their decision-making process. Each year the number of
studies that use UGC to explore the topic of social media in tourism and hospitality is
growing, the researchers explore different aspects of service quality, destination image
and reputation, experiences and behaviour, the persuasive power of UGC as eWOM, as
well as tourist mobility patterns (Lu and Stepchenkova, 2015).
Cantallops and Salvi (2014) note eWOM is an effective tool for all the major
stakeholders, and highlights the major reasons for sharing content and other forms of
eWOM also highlighting the major benefits from eWOM for customers and for hotels
(Figure 20)
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Figure 20. Major benefits of eWOM according to Cantallops and Salvi (2014)
Similarly, Nguyen and Coudounaris (2015) have the same conclusions, they are better
in illustrating of the role of online reviews in customer-business relationship (Figure 21).
Figure 21. Role of online reviews in customer-business relationship (Nguyen and

Coudounaris, 2015)
Does better WOM and eWOM in particular leads to better performance? According to
Kim et al. (2015), the overall ratings and the higher the response rate to any comments,
and negative in particular is directly correlated with the performance of hotel, as the
one-year study from 128 hotels show. Thus, managing relationship with review services
and social media should be a crucial part of hotels strategy (Kim et al., 2015). Similarly,
Assaf et al. (2015) studies more than 50 hotels in Europe for more than 4 years and
25
conclude that satisfaction correlates positively with hotel performance, however, this
influence is less vivid for larger hotels. Xie et al. (2014) analyses the reviews and
management responses from 843 hotels listed on TripAdvisor and concludes that
overall rating does have a direct impact on hotel performance. In addition, the
responses from management, together with variation and volume of consumer reviews,
can moderate this relationships. Moreover, wider online presence means higher
occupancy rate (Xie et al., 2016). However, positive eWOM and reviews does not
always depend on the factors controllable by a hotel, the examples are positive regional
reviews and region's reputation (Phillips et al., 2015).
It is important to understand why customers leave satisfied and dissatisfied hotel

reviews. Major reason for satisfaction and positive electronic WOM are non-tangible
aspects, most important is good service while tangible aspects, such as furnishing and
problems with money are the major sources for negative e-WOM (Berezina et al.,
2016). Fixing problems related to the extra charges and credit card can thus decrease
the number of negative recommendations and negative WOM, while great personal
approach to service and great value for money means the hotel would definitely receive
positive reviews and e-WOM (Berezina et al., 2016). Hotels with higher rating are very
quick in responding to bad online reviews and bad publicity, they respond with
appreciation, apologies, and explanations for what had gone wrong (Levy et al., 2013).
Compensation is rarely mentioned, however, some responses imply compensation
(Levy et al., 2013). On average, there are more positive reviews than negative reviews,
thus the hoteliers need to increase the number of reviews to improve its average rating
to counterbalance their negative reviews, if any, not to mention the investigation and
management of the reasons for negative comments (Melin-Gonzlez et al., 2013). The
use of online reviews in the co-creation of the service experience is an attractive but
elusive goal (Park and Allen, 2013). Park and Allen (2013) compare two different
approaches in managing online complaints, one is public, another is hidden, non-
responders believe that reacting to customer reviews is only an extreme measure. The
authors suggests that using customer reviews as the part of strategic customer
relationship management can be in fact very effective. Indeed, Yen and Tang (2015)
notice that core services and attributes are much more important in eWOM than
facilitating attributes, thus the authors warn about the danger of over-promising, while
encountering difficulties with fulfilling the additional promise additional resources
should be allocated even at the expense of performing routine services. Also,
26
perceived value is crucial in guest satisfaction and return intentions, regardless of hotel
classes and prices (Jeong and Mindy Jeon, 2008). An important issue is perceived
justice, particularly during the service recovery after a certain incident, the effective
management of service recovery may lead to even larger level of customers loyalty and
e-WoM (Kim and Tang, 2016). Ong (2012) notes that trust in online UGC now
outweighs advice on holidays from travel agents. Interestingly, that customers use
online reviews to narrow down their hotel choices, but the final decision is made based
on customer's intuition (Ong, 2012). Most of the surveyed travellers (76% of 200
respondents) have been impressed with the accuracy of the hotel reviews (Ong,
2012). There are evident national differences in how UGC services are used, for
example, UK and Swiss users tend to share their travelling experience more, while
Spanish respondents are more active on TripAdvisor compared to others (Wilson et al.,
2012).
2.6. Social Media and Premium Hotels

Managing social media is often different for premium and luxury hotels. They particularly
beneficial for them as they help to react fast towards the requests and complaints of
guests (Parr, 2015). Young millennials increase their share in total number of customers
of premium travel products, they have own peculiarities in customer behaviour. One
example is the need of travel products to have high instagramability hotel rooms,
resorts have to be pleasing visually to increase the engagement of video and photo
posts of customers (BK, 2014). Another important trend is growing share of online
reservations made using social media (Perkins, 2014). There is an evident influence of
eWOM on the intention to book certain premium/luxury hotel room (Laursn, 2014).
Cervelon and Galipinzo (2015) note that for luxury hotels, the negative comments on
social media platforms and Facebook in particular had no impact on the intention to stay
at the hotel and intention to like the hotel brand page. Meanwhile, social coupons might
not be effective for premium hospitality services (Yang, 2015) The growing importance
of social media in promoting premium travel products resulted in the rise of jobs and
positions that are solely responsible for managing social media accounts (BK, 2014).
While industry experts notice a number of good cases on how boutique hotels
effectively uses social media to increase their sales, large and undifferentiated premium
and luxury hotels are mostly underuse the opportunities for social media (BK, 2014; FM,
27
2015). Premium and luxury hotels have very high scores on review services, however,
the customers expect this score would be as close to highest as possible (BluSky
Marketing, 2014). Premium consumers preference in UGC platforms are slightly
different compared to ordinary services, as the following Figure shows (Brand Karma,
2014).
2.7. Social Media and Consumer Behaviour among Hotel Customers in

Russia
Kazakov and Predvoditeleva (2015) tried to analyse the difference between the U.S.
tourists and Russian tourists in how they use online and social media in making
decisions over the hotels. Kazakov and Predvoditeleva (2015) tried to preserve the
methodology used by their foreign counterparts in the study by Verma et al. (2012).
However, they noted that there are a number of specific differences because Russian
consumers have a different culture, and consumption habits, they also tend to use local
social networks, such Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki and local search engines, such as
Yandex. Their study focused on the respondents who are rather young, frequent
travellers and had a relatively high income, and with the total number of respondents of
about 500. Kazakov and Predvoditeleva (2015) note that Russian travellers tend to use
web search engines and social media more heavily than their U.S. counterparts, with
the difference on average of 70% vs. 30-40% in the U.S. (note the difference might be
because the study by Verma et al. was in 2012), both among business travel and leisure
segments. Thus, SEO, Search engine and social media advertising might be crucial in
attracting internal tourists in Russia (Dostaleva, 2012). In contrast, Americans are more
active in using OTAs and industry-related web aggregators such as TripAdvisor.com.
Considering the most important factors, hotel promotions are less important for Russian
travellers. Proper location is very important for both U.S. and Russian consumers
(Polkanova and Kazakov, 2014). Russian tourists tend to be more discouraged by
negative reviews compared to the U.S. travellers, even if the average rating is rather
high (Kazakov and Predvoditeleva, 2015). The lower the rating, the higher
discouragement by negative reviews. Russians are more likely to share feedback and
their hotel experience online (Kazakov and Predvoditeleva, 2015). In general, analysis
of use of social media by Russian consumers show that Russians are very active in
28
using online resources and social media while choosing hotels, they are more
influenced by reviews and feedback, there are not gender differences in decision-
making process but there are considerable differences between business and leisure
travellers (Kazakov, 2014; Dhiman, 2016)
2.8. Literature review and questions
The following research additional research questions were developed in accordance

with the research aim based on the literature review (Figure 22)
Figure 22. Research questions after the literature review.
29
3. Methodology
The following chapter present the methods the study implements, considerations over
why certain approaches and tools were used while others were rejected. The chapter
also mentions strengths and weaknesses of the chosen methodology. The research
uses the suggestions and frameworks proposed by Saunders et al. (2016).
3.1. Research Philosophy

The considerations over the research methodology start from the considerations over
the research philosophy (Kothari, 2004). The general dichotomy here is positivism vs.
interpretivism. If we use the positivist approach, then we believe that the study can be
done using the objective, mostly numerical terms. The example would be the
measurement of the correlation between the average review score of the hotel and the
total amount of money spent on social media divided by the number of rooms. The
exact opposite in this dichotomy is interpretivism, as it states that the reality cannot be
easily measured using the objective terms, and subjective qualitative data can be still
effective in answering the research aim. The possible example would be the research
that would use the set of in-depth interviews targeted to customers on their opinions
about how they use social media in their decision-making process. In this study, the
subjective opinions of industry representatives are used to explore this topic, thus the
research methodology is largely based on interpretisism philosophy. Interpretivism
philosophy is often utilized in the studies on tourism (Phillimore and Goodson, 2004).
However, the elements of pragmatism philosophy are seen in this research as it uses
the quantitative data, the mixed research methodology is the core of this study.
3.2. Research Approach

As stems from the chosen research philosophy, the research is mostly inductive, rather
than deductive. While there is a huge amount of information about the use of social
media in the hospitality industry and hotel segment in particular, the literature review
showed that there limited opportunities to formulate a certain hypothesis that can be
tested under the deductive approach to research. Thus, the study will mostly implement
the inductive reasoning, as the collected primary qualitative data will help to gain an
insight into the topic and formulate certain conclusions.
30
Meanwhile, the literature review and interviewing has formulated certain hypotheses
about how the potential customers use social media, and these hypotheses can be
tested using the quantitative data. Thus, the research approach is the combination of
inductive and deductive reasoning with the tendency towards the inductive one. This
approach would help to answer the research aim and three research objectives.
3.3. Research Sampling

The formulation of the sampling for this research was the most challenging issue in the
design of research methodology. One important difficulty was the language barrier, as a
large share of respondents were not able to answer the questions in English, however,
the researcher was assisted by the people who were the native speakers and helped to
translate the questions and collected data from and to English. One thing that should be
noted is that English speakers and non-English respondents often have different views
on social media use during the hotel selection process; thus, the lack of division of the
sample based on language proficiency can be regarded as a weakness of this
methodology (Schuckert et al., 2015). The Russian-speaking assistants also helped in
contacting the research sample. The total research population was also a difficult issue;
there are only a few experts on social media use in hotel industry in Russia (Peniagina,
2014), thus the researcher was limited in finding the right interviews, not to mention the
lack of objective measurements of who can be considered as a true expert. After the
careful analysis, few experts were approaches, from which three agreed to be
interviewed via online Skype calls so that they could comment on the major research
questions. Then, the prominent premium hotel chains and single hotels mostly located
in metropolitan areas such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg (see Watson, 2016), were
found and contacted. In some cases, the researcher used LinkedIn platform to find the
person who would answer the question. In some cases, Facebook was very effective.
Connections via Facebook might be very effective way to achieve the higher response
rate among the targeted sample (McGinley et al., 2015). The total number of these
respondents was 16. The following Figure 23 shows the major respondents divided into
three groups.
31
Figure 23. Interview sample
For the small surveying, the researcher collected 54 answers; however, only forty
answers are regarded as valid. The respondents were surveyed online, major part of
the respondents were those who were the current guests of premium hotels agreed to
participate thanks to the help of the interviewees. Thus, both in interviewing (including
consulting) and in surveying, the judgmental sampling was used.
Considering the surveying part, most of the respondents were local guests (Russia) and
from former soviet countries, as predicted by the interviewees (Figure 24)
Figure 24. Country of respondents
32
There were more male than female respondents, as also predicted by the interviewees
(Figure).
A considerable share of the respondents were young or of middle age (Figure 25)
Figure 26. Respondent age, young respondents are prevalent
3.4. Ethics Issues

The ethic issues noticed by Saunders et al. (2016) were carefully studied during the
research process. All the respondents participated voluntarily in this research. The
major issues was to ensure the anonymity of some of the respondents, while not losing
the quality of findings part. In many cases the respondents required not to provide the
readers with the transcripts of their interviews, which was also ensured. The surveyed
respondents were not asked to share any personal information, expect for their general
demographics. One important issue that became evident during the research is the
possible misinterpretation of answers or questions, as many interviewees and
33
surveyees only spoke Russian, thus the data was collected with the help of the
assistants.
During the interviews, including the interview via e-mails and social networks, the
researcher stressed they can skip any question if they wish and that they answer
questions anonymously. The researcher also ensured the respondents would be
reached and interviewed/surveyed using the method that is most convenient. The
researcher also tried to ensure the lack of any bias and avoid any pressing, if the
answers were not in line with expected results. The research also follows the rules of
Harvard referencing system.
3.5. Validity and Reliability

The major threat to both validity and reliability is the language barrier given the limited
knowledge of Russian by the researcher.
34
4. Results
4.1. Interview results

The interview questions were based on the questions posed after the literature review
part, and results of the interviews are presented as divided by six major topics.
4.1.1. Border between online marketing and online promotion and social media
management
Most of the interviews state there is no a certain strict border between their online
marketing and social media marketing/management, as often they use the unified
strategy. Significant part of the respondents notices that search engine optimisation
(SEO) may be crucial in the promotion of hotel online, however some says that the
growing effectiveness of social media marketing and note that SEO-management
become less and less effective, while paid ads are growing in popularity. The SEO texts
are becoming less effective, respondents notice that SEO-text often does not result in
genuine traffic. It is crucial for the premium hotel to have a well-integrated system that
would combine social media management, cooperation with OTAs, CRM systems and
room booking systems. A number of respondents also mentioned about the
effectiveness of implementation of cloud-based property management systems often to
be integrated with software enterprise solutions. The example of such systems is
Cloudbeds, Ibelsa.rooms, Loventiz and Bananadesk. Respodents increasingly pay for
ads to both Google and local search engines, notably Yandex. Part of the respondents
notes that they would not be able to gain an initial set of reviews without contextual
advertising on OTAs and major travel portals such as TripAdvisor. While Vkontakte is
underused as an ads platform, hotels increasingly pay Facebook (also as the part of
Instagram ads) because it offers better and more effective targeting.
Those respondents from international chained-brand hotels notice they often lack an
autonomy in their online marketing activities and social media management, most of the
guides and activities are coming from headquarters. Meanwhile, local independent
boutique hotels are often more effective in their online promotion because they have full
autonomy and can develop better social media and online marketing strategy.
35
4.1.2. OTAs, aggregator services and booking
Most of the respondents suggest that the three major OTAs and travel services they
cooperate with are the part of Tripadvisor group, Expedia, Inc group and The Priceline
Group. In addition, many cooperate with prominent local OTAs, such as Ostrovok.ru,
Yandex.travel and Ozon.Travel. Some of the respondents notice that the commission
can be rather high and burdensome for the hotels, particularly small independent ones.
However, the major problem is that OTAs and other third-party services often misinform
their customers about the room availability, which leads to different negative
consequences, such as poor reviews and decreased customer satisfaction.
4.1.3. Social Media/Network Services

The interviews general suggests that local premium hotel mostly focus on spending on
Facebook (plus, in some cases, Instagram) ads, despite the two most popular social
network services are Vkontakte and Odnoslassniki. The reason why many noted such
an emphasis is that majority of their target audience mostly or only use Facebook
among these three social network services. One respondent noted that most of their
guests are foreign visitors, thus Facebook is their evident priority. One interesting
finding is that found often, the international chained-brand hotels have separate social
media accounts for each hotel, even if there are two hotels in one city. In some cases,
the separation is particularly necessary, as it was in Azimote Hotels chain. Their hotel in
Sochi mostly attracts Russian local tourists and tourists from former soviet countries,
the hotel is often filled during the weekend and public holidays. Their Moscow hotels
attracts Russian business travellers and, to less extent, foreign business travellers,
while their hotel in Saint Petersburg mainly attracts foreign leisure travellers. It is thus
natural for the group to have separate pages and very distinctive targeting. Such
division also helps when facing the considerations over the language used on the fan
pages. Sochi Hotel accounts are only in Russian. However, most of the respondents
notice they mostly have an equal division of posts in Russian and English language. For
some of the respondents, Vkontakte is a very effective platform not only for social media
management but also for targeted advertising, given their focus on local leisure
travellers. Some respondents however notice the lack of effective measurements tools
to track their ROI in ads for Vkontakte. Many interviewees noted that Instagram become
a very effective platform when it comes to targeted ads.
36
The respondents notice the importance of high-quality photos and design of their
website, particularly for small boutique hotels, as they often lack the professional
photographs and designers. For local niche boutique hotels, they often use their social
media accounts to keep in touch with the loyal customer and often use very informal
language. Different interviewees noticed Twitter is not effective platform for social media
marketing for Russian hotels, however, still the representatives of international chained-
brand hotels noted they are required to manage their local Twitter account as prescribed
by the HQ. None of the respondents uses Odnoklassniki as the platform for social
media marketing, despite its popularity; it is mostly used by the customers that are
different from target audience. One interesting notion is that having an account on this
social media can actually decrease the brand value because of the loss of prestige.
While some respondents noted that LinkedIn as widely used platform among some of
the targeted customers, some humorously noted its ineffectiveness given the planned
ban of this social network by the end of 2016.
For many respondents TripAdvisor and Booking.com are two crucial OTAs, while some
note that other social media can even be neglected. Here, the crucial factor is the
average rating, which is particularly important for the survival of small independent
hotels and small local hotel chains.
4.1.4. Responsibility for Social Media strategy

The evident finding is that found often, the respondent was the person who holds the
responsibility for social media management. In some cases, they were the marketing
managers, in other e-commerce managers, while some were responsible for PR. Small
independent hotels usually have the assistant director to manage this area, in some
cases, the director is the one who formulates the social media strategy. Most of the
respondents state that the outsource of social media management/marketing can be
very ineffective, as many of them falsify engagement statistics, but fake traffic, but this
does not lead to higher sales or enhanced customer loyalty. For international chained-
brand hotels, the general social media and online marketing strategy is developed by
the headquarters, the autonomy of local hotel management varies, but it is usually
rather low. However, the communication with the clients is the responsibility of local line
managers, including the management of complaints via OTAs.
37
4.1.5. Measurement Tools
The findings from the interviews suggest us that measuring the success of social media
activity can be difficult, particularly for small hotels. On the one hand, Facebook offers
great functionality to track engagement of the audience, particularly for ads, but they
often lack well-developed method to tack the relationships between investments,
engagement and sales. This is more direct for OTAs, as they track the sales. Most of
the respondents notice that information from ATOs is crucial for them. The average
rating is often used as the benchmark of success. Google ads analytics and analytics
offered by PMS cloud-based services is also used. Vkontakte has lower functionality to
track the ROI compared to Facebook, however, some respondents notice that
Vkontakte is a very powerful platform.
4.1.6. Profile of Consumers

Many interviewees noted that it is hard to objectively say what is the profile of
consumers who mostly engaged by social media and OTAs due to the difficulties in
tracking the consumer decision-making process. Many respondents noted the
difference between leisure and business travellers, such division is valid for both local
and foreign guests. Leisure travellers are largely influenced by reviews and UGC
presented at OTAs, while business travellers often do not choose the hotel by
themselves, as it is often made by other employees or by their subordinates if this is a
top-manager or an owner of a certain business. For leisure travellers, there are two
major profiles. In one case, the booking is done by the travel agency, however the
interviewees notice that the growing share of their clients are independent travellers or
those travellers who cannot be easily interpreted as either business or leisure travellers.
4.2. Survey results

First part of the survey questionnaire tried to reveal the preferences of the target
customers when it comes to social networks. Facebook was revealed to be a very
popular platform, as less than quarter of the respondents do not have an account there.
38
Figure 27. Facebook popularity
What is surprising, especially considering the planned ban of the platform, is that
LinkedIn is rather popular among the respondents, as more than half use it, however,
they respondents are very inactive there.
Figure 28. LinkedIn popularity
The large share of respondents, particularly female and young are very active users of
Instagram. However, about half of the respondents do not have an account there.
39
Figure 29. Instagram popularity
The small share of the respondents, mostly from Russia, have an account in Vkontakte,
they are rather active users because the social network is often used as the local (and
mostly free) clone of such services as Spotify and Netflix.
Figure 30. Vkontakte popularity
Twitter is the least popular social media/network among the respondents
40
Figure 31. Twitter Popularity
The survey also revealed that significant share of respondents usually do not book the
hotel rooms by themselves. In addition, a major share of respondents mostly book the
rooms using the website of the hotel/hotel chain often reflecting the fact they are loyal to
certain hotel brand.
Figure 32. Hotel Reservation Behaviour
Finally, the surveyed people told about the crucial factors in the hypothetical case in
which they would have to choose the hotel room in the city they have never been to, the
most important factor was the average rating, as the following Figure 33 shows.
41
Figure 33. Factors in Decision-Making process
42
5. Discussion
This chapter takes a more critical analysis of the results in which the results are
discussed in the context of the research questions formulated and the literature review.
The following Figure 34 summarizes these findings
Figure 34. Summary of discussion the context of the research questions formulated and the
literature review
In addition, the discussion part also includes the analysis of the results in the context of
literature review part that revealed what might be the major problems hotels may have
when managing social media. This is based on the analysis of the comments of experts
and some of the representatives of the hotels. Russian premium hotels have the
43
following seven major problems as compared to the existing recommendations and the
best case studies to follow (Figure 35).
In addition, the discussion part also includes the following framework with five major
steps that might improve the utilization of social media by local premium hotels based
on the analysis of the suggestions of the experts and representatives of the hotels that
were interviewed (Figure 35).
Figure 35. Five Steps System
44
45
6. Conclusions
In conclusion, the research was important and insightful given the lack of any studies on
similar topics (though, studies by Kazakov were insightful and helped to gain a better
understanding about the market). With the fast development of online services in
Russia, some of the findings might be obsolete in the near future; however, the study
can still be interesting for those working in Russian hotel industry.
The introduction has revealed the problem of decreasing loyalty in the hotel industry,
while social media can improve it and also boost sales. Increasing attention is paid to
the topic of social media and user-generated content (UGC) in hospitality. Better
management of social media can bring additional competitive advantage, however,
many hotels underuse this. Russian hotel industry has a potential of growth and own
peculiarities, and the study is thus interesting.
The research question is How social media/networks help Russian premium hotels to
alter the consumer behaviour and how their customers use social media?. Additional
research questions are presented after literature review as they help to understand the
topic in-depth.
Literature review has revealed that social media can be indeed a powerful marketing
tool and in hotel industry in particular. The topic of use of social media in hotel industry
is trendy. The literature review has revealed the concept of three stages of travel,
centred around the consumer behaviour.
The research uses the combination of qualitative data (interviews with hotel
representatives and social media experts) and quantitative data (survey of Russian
hotel guests).
The results show that online marketing and social media management are usually not
separated activity among Russian hotels. Hotels actively use prominent foreign and
local OTAs. The major focus in made on Facebook, though some focus on Vkontakte as
it helps to bring local travellers. Most of the hotels avoid outsourcing social media
management outside the company. Tracking the success of social media activity can be
challenging. For business travellers and non-individual travellers, social media
marketing activity can be less effective.
46
Facebook is the most popular platform among the target audience. The most important
factor during the selection are average rating of a hotel.
The discussion part answers six research questions formulated after the literature
review. Seven major problems in social media management are revealed including the
small correlation between social media activity and sales, poor account management,
poorer utilisation of social media compared to hotels and economy brands, lack of
effective communication and poor use of visual content. A five-step system to address
these issues are presented, it starts with the creation of remarkable experience and
finishes with the integration of online reviews into the performance appraisal system.
47
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Appendix
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Utilize Social Media and how their

1.1. Research background and context

Figure 1. Number of users worldwide from 201- to 2020 (Statista, 2016a)

Figure 7. Revenue in the Online Travel Booking market. (Statista, 2016d)

Figure 9. Penetration of SNSs in Russia according to Statista (2016g).

The research question is presented:

Figure 15. Research objectives

2.1. Social Media as a Powerful and Effective business tool

Growing popularity of SNSs resulted in a growing utilisation of social media by

2.2. Social media in hospitality: new opportunities

2.3. Prominent research on social media in hospitality

2.5. Social Media and Stages of Travel

According to different studies, the vast majority of travellers, particularly leisure

In general, the intention of booking is positively influenced by consumers commitment,

Figure 21. Role of online reviews in customer-business relationship (Nguyen and

It is important to understand why customers leave satisfied and dissatisfied hotel

2.6. Social Media and Premium Hotels

2.7. Social Media and Consumer Behaviour among Hotel Customers in

2.8. Literature review and questions

The following research additional research questions were developed in accordance

Figure 22. Research questions after the literature review.

3.1. Research Philosophy

3.2. Research Approach

3.3. Research Sampling

Figure 24. Country of respondents

Figure 26. Respondent age, young respondents are prevalent

3.4. Ethics Issues

3.5. Validity and Reliability

4.1. Interview results

4.1.3. Social Media/Network Services

4.1.4. Responsibility for Social Media strategy

4.1.6. Profile of Consumers

4.2. Survey results

Figure 28. LinkedIn popularity

Figure 30. Vkontakte popularity

Twitter is the least popular social media/network among the respondents

Figure 32. Hotel Reservation Behaviour

Figure 35. Five Steps System

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