ABSTRACT
Traditional marketing approaches for the tourism, travel, hospitality and leisure industries focused on identifying the product features and benefits that would satisfy the needs, wants and demands of tourists and travelers. Many marketing managers focus their efforts and activities on exploiting promotional tools including advertising, sales promotion, public relations, special events, publicity, and brand awareness. But in the current social, economic and business environment, marketing managers in tourism need to have Web 2.0 applications and techniques as part of their overall marketing plans. Perhaps the most significant benefit of using Web 2.0 applications in marketing is that it offers an opportunity to actively engage consumers. An increasing number of tourism marketers are using social networking tools to work in partnership with customers on product development, service value enrichment, promotion and marketing communication. Small and medium-sized tourism firms have developed competitive advantages by using Web 2.0 marketing tools to effectively compete with larger firms.
