ABSTRACT
There are various platforms offered by the social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter for the marketing of products and services for the tourism industry. Social network offers media technologies that can facilitate online planning, organizing, and functionality, monitoring and controlling perspectives, wherein the data gathered can be used to develop their product and services mix for customer satisfaction. The tourism industry can market themselves in social media and networking. Tourism industry can use social media to engage customers and clients in dialogue to identify and analyze their needs. With the help of these networking sites, tourism industry can interface with the consumers before, during, and after the product and services mix experience. Social media is dynamic and young and the objective for corporations to invest and participate in social media platform is to offer an alternative mode of communication and also it helps to cultivate long-term relationships with their guests. Such promotional mix campaigns and new information can be spread through social media tools. Thus, social media is relatively new and the advantages are abundant such as it is efficient, effective, and affordable; it is viral and has the potential to spread and establish brand awareness quickly and far; and it is said to be able to develop link baits, attention, and massive amounts of traffic. However, the purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the effects of social media marketing tools in the tourism and hospitality industry.
