The importance of digital marketing in the hospitality industry *Supapat Tiewphongphan(supapatdo@gmail.com) , Sirichai Lorfuangtham(sweetez123@gmail.com), Jaturawis Wongboonmeedej(keonhw@gmail.com), Kantaphon Klinnimnuan(gun8108@gmail.com) Silpakorn University, Vatel International Business School Abstract With the increasing usage and emergence of technology in terms of digital marketing, most companies realize the potential of digital marketing that is a significant tool for reaching their goal and target. The purpose of this research is to create the sum of data and analyze to become a fact of data about how important digital marketing is in the hospitality industry. The objective of this research is that to define the term of digital marketing which relates to the hospitality industry, to carry out a literature review on the subject of customer feedback, to conduct primary research with the support of information from a reasonable source. This research is based on using gathering methods that have reasonable information from all sources such as books, newsletters, articles, professional comments, or personal ideas about their process of thinking about how important digital marketing relates to the hospitality industry. Most of the information will be founded on the internet which is the arsenal of information. The information that is chosen will be comparing and contrasting each information to be able to put in the argument method to analyze that information which will create the fact for research purposes. The finding section of this research shows that using the quantitative method by questionnaire has a result that connects to the subject in positive ways and most of the respondents understand the digital marketing awareness from the hotel industry. This research helps to overcome the issue encountered in the based articles. Also, this research develops as much functional and less complex process of developing digital marketing in order to realize the important role of digital marketing in the hospitality industry. In the end, this research provides a lot of usable information to be used in future marketing. It shows how digital marketing became one of the impactful marketing in this era. As digital marketing is focused on the accessibility of customers first so there is no limitation of gender or age in this digital marketing trend. Digital marketing is the chance for every industry to survive in the market. Digital Marketing can make the hospitality industry save their cost and become more effective in spreading their brands. Keyword: Digital marketing, Hospitality industry, the importance of digital marketing. 1.Introduction Digital Marketing is the trend of marketing that most use widely in every business that is the important tools to reduce the cost of advertising which is every problem of business and the best solution for reducing cost strategy which leads to the increase of profit by the result of creative digital marketing to attract more customer in wide-area using present technology or advance technology that more efficient than the old fashion marketing. In the competitive era and also merge with the digital trend leading to the result of endless competitive that each of business pushing each other to be the leading person in each company or business and it’s important for every business to participate in this competition that most of them are forced to improve their self to stay leading and to survive in this competitive era (Rashi Sood, 2019). The hospitality industry is the industry that focuses on the travel and tourism industry is one of the world’s largest industries with the global economic contribution over a trillion of the US. the dollar which is about accommodation, transportation, entertainment, and attraction(Statista Research Department, 2018).Most of the leading company that relates to the hospitality industry has the self-awareness of how the importance of digital marketing will lead to hospitality industry decision that present, the world has become increasingly about digital traffic which has a massive effect to customer behavior that every customer can access information in real-time and it’s hospitality industry to recognize customer behavior and gave them information for choosing accommodation, facilities, service, and restaurant (Peter O'Connor, 2014). The importance of digital marketing that leading to understanding the importance of marketing for the hospitality industry is about fundamental of the hospitality industry will always concern about the satisfaction of the customer and to keep customer bound contact and their satisfaction in the right way is the tool for creating the customer positive behavior to the business. Digital Marketing will not reach their peak potential if the product is not had quality enough to qualify guest satisfaction which is the important role in the hospitality industry and also good product must go side by side with the service provider that is the only necessary stuff in the hospitality industry to be the judge as their power of quality of service before leading to create digital marketing(Ankur, 2018). This research objective is to identify the important benefit that will happen to the hospitality industry that this research will be the information tools for decision making and make hospitality industry consider and concern about digital marketing that effects to hospitality industry success while most of the large scale hotel brand realize the importance of digital marketing and how those things affect to their industry. Also, this will be the research paper that has enough information about digital marketing effects on the hospitality industry to clarify the essential things about digital marketing in terms of important things that the hospitality industry should consider. 2.The definition of Digital Marketing To understand and clarify the meaning of how important about digital marketing that effects to the hospitality industry is a principle method to research and understand a fundamental of those things which is including how this digital marketing was born to be and how they evolve or develop themself to become a useful experiment for business purpose especially in the hospitality industry that consider this experiment as one of the essential material for build role to organize hospitality industry. 2.1 Digital Marketing Concept The source of success in term of business digital marketing nowadays, Most important part is about having a strong and effective in digital marketing which all of them had to involve with a digital footprint on the internet that allows most of the business industry to create a marketing plan and without a digital marketing strategy, new customer acquisition, brand visibility, and potential revenue-generating opportunities may be compromised. Search engine optimization: is also known as SEO. In short, this type of digital marketer is used by marketers to adjust website content to appear in the general listings of search engines. Content marketing is another important thing. It's a method that marketers use to consistently deliver valuable content to their audience. This helps to identify the audience base with a clear objective. Social media marketing is a type of digital marketing that many marketers use. Due to the extensive availability and cost-effective characteristics, every marketer usually starts by creating a social presence on Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus, and other channels first, then moving to other areas. Pay per click (PPC) is a subset of digital marketing. One that can increase the amount of traffic on your webpage instantly. Affiliate marketing is important. In this concept, affiliate marketers promote company services or products and receive a profit share when people buy products or services. It has 4 elements which is the merchant who creates service and product, the affiliate or the publisher who writes a review of each product, the customer is the person that connects to the merchant after being influenced by the affiliate, and the network is the system that connects the merchant and the affiliate to create a smooth transaction. Native Advertising appears in the form and nature of the media on social media. For example, Instagram ads appear as posts in feeds and as stories on Instagram. Marketing automation is not a part of digital marketing. But is a method that makes your work easier as the name suggests, this type of digital marketing category will help you do related tasks automatically. Email Marketing is one of the oldest ways to reach users. Helps you to improve website traffic, improve sales lead generation processes, and increase product-related signups. 2.2 Digital Marketing impact on the hospitality industry Digital Marketing is the trend that most industries in this era chose to be the best ways for making marketing campaigns and generating their business successful. The benefit of this Digital Marketing is a worldwide marketing platform that convenient access to customers which in terms of the hospitality industry that, It’s essential to consider that digital marketing increases customer attraction and allows customers to have enough information about the hotel that hotel marketing is provided via digital marketing platform. In fact, nowadays people can access hotel information such as accommodation, restaurant, facility, and service in real-time and conveniently by their smartphone, hotel website, or hotel agency website review.(Insights, S 2018) There are several facts that prove the impact and effectiveness of Digital Marketing. Most of the customers now had the power to compare prices and feature benefits of each hotel that available via an online source that the digital market reflects all related information about the hotel such as price, standard, and review. Presently, most information in online sources now is acceptable and has enough reliability compared with physical information like books. The effect of technology innovation causes the hospitality industry to change physical media to digital media by the behavior of customers. Most of the hotel industry now realize the power of digital marketing and they use those techniques and one of them is the flash advertisement that only affects people while they search about finding accommodation in those areas and the hospitality industry now give priority to investment or funds in terms of digital marketing developments and using it. Digital marketing allows the industry to support or change strategies that differ in the requirement and marketing trend which allows the industry to have more flexibility.(Insights, S 2018) Consider all of the industry scale. The hospitality industry had more power to increase the effectiveness of advertising via a digital marketing platform that all of them are accessible on the same marketing tools and criteria to allow opportunity about job application included. Digital marketing allows us to interact directly and instantly and to promote hotel products which increase customer satisfaction also improving service which is about customer feedback which is a review, comment, satisfaction level via the digital platform. The hospitality industry is able to gather and collect information from customer channels that have important metrics to create personalization content to the customer for reaching their satisfaction. Increasing hotel brand loyalty by hotel keeping transparency between customer and hotel brand which allow customers to have trust and respect for each hotel brand. Entering in this era of competition that causes the hospitality industry to be innovative and bring out new things to market to attract the customer with a new concept, service, product, technology to reach customer satisfaction and it’s essential things the hospitality industry had to survive in this digital era. (Insights, S 2018) 3. Research Methodology This research paper is focusing on and concerns digital marketing in the hospitality business which has a huge impact on the marketing of each hospitality business nowadays. Scientific research is research that produces internal thermal conduction, scientific rules, and agreements. Normally, thinking and discussing a single subject about the reason that all of the things depend on the logic process, reasoning though, and the examination of the evidence. It should be possible, in practice and in scientific form, to conduct research by the same researcher or different researchers and to draw a similar conclusion, even if situations may not be available. This model method of the scientific research strategy is best convenient along with physical interaction and natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry. Social statistic science research, on the other side of the moon, deals with people as social beings and as members of communities. Humans are less reliable than non-human entities, and thus social science varies from physical and natural sciences because it addresses humans and their social actions. (Veal, 2016, 2-3) Qualitative and quantitative research scientific methods and processes are able to basically be designated to result in research. The quantitative research method approaches study by means of mathematical analysis and thus relies heavily on numerical data. To assure the possibility of this kind of scientific method that it is very important to research a relatively large number of people and to use computers to analyze the data. Data can be collected through questionnaire surveys, count observations, or from secondary sources. Qualitative research methods do not involve numbers. Tend to gather data from a small number of people than a limited amount of data from a large number of people. Methods of collecting qualitative data include observation and participatory observation and informal and in-depth interviews. This research provides a method and applies for quantitative and qualitative research methods. The research consists of questionnaires and closed questions, most of the respondents have the opportunity to choose from other alternatives. A few open-ended questions have been introduced to give respondents the ability to combine answers and opinions. (Veal, 2016, 40) The following section will analyze the information that gathers from survey equipment by using a quantitative research method and applied scientific method and provided secondary source information be analyzed by the critical review method 4.Finding/Result The survey: The survey of digital marketing in the hotel industry by questionnaire. A sample size of 127 people, most of the sample was from university students and adults. These samples were from their friends, family, and acquaintances. The number of participants was gathered by using the internet via google form to schedule the survey resource. All of the information about the survey will be applied scientific analysis method by using SPSS to create the descriptive statistic analysis which helps the author to provide the whole vision and clarity of this research. The measure: The data was collected on questionnaires that we made. The questionnaire contained many questions that indicated how people felt about this topic. We separated the questionnaire in three main parts. First was some personal information which was age, gender, and education level. The second was how long the samples knew about this topic, which platform they used, how often they used it. And the last was about how they felt about the topics which we provided five choices for them in scale which were 1. Strongly disagree 2.Disagree 3.Medium 4.Agree 5. Strongly agree. Demographic Information N = participant Results show the value of descriptive statistics in the first section which has Age(2.28), Gender(1.64), Education(2.37), and the result show most of the participants were male teenagers in the 18-25 age range who graduated from secondary school and still studying in university. Booking hotel source used The results show that they use Booking.com(1.84) and others such as Expedia, TripAdvisor, Agoda. Most participants often used this platform (2.09). And participants had known about this for a long time(1.70). Participants Satisfaction Most of the participants had felt satisfied or medium about digital marketing in the hotel industry(3.762). Most questions that participants felt satisfied the most were how the convenience of digital marketing(4.21) and gain more information(3.95). And the least satisfied were the safety when used digital marketing service(3.25) and how digital marketing affect their life(3.26). Standard Deviation From the table. Standard deviation most effect in the first and second part of the questionnaire which was Age(.981), Gender(.483), Education level(.722), and Source(1.035), and How often(.713). But these parts of the questionnaire didn’t affect our research because the importance was in the last part. Which the outcome barely affected by the standard deviation. Because although different age, gender, or education levels. Most of participants felt the same way in this questionnaire. Archival Research: Historical of internet (Andrew, E 2013)Digital marketing started when there were computers that we’re able to store large amounts of data. Then, it used this large amount of data to provide information for customers. For the next stage of developing digital marketing to be innovative technology is to change from the old-fashion concept which they used to drive products to the front of the house to newer concepts as the customers can access and connect to the merchandise easily. Digital marketing became more effective because of the invention of the World Wide Web. World Wide Web is the portal that is used to connect and access the internet. In this stage, there were only computers that we’re able to connect with the internet so digital marketing is still for specific groups. As time passed by, There was an invention of the portable phone which is the phone that can access the internet like computers. This situation boosts internet users and makes lots of industry plans to create new marketing called “ Digital Marketing” Digital marketing has become well known as people are able to connect with the internet easily. Digital marketing is the new market that is effective in creating awareness and decreasing the cost of the industry. Most industries focus on the digital market as it is the easiest way to reach the customer. Case Study: Hotel Marketing - How to Drive Direct Sales The following section will be the conclusion and analyze data collected in terms of a case study that’s related to the research topic and show the interesting point of view in letters and a few statistical proofs of effective data. This is the case study data that is retrieved from a website about hotel management information including a case study of each hotel around the world. The question of this case study starts with “Case Study in Hotel Marketing - How to Drive Direct Sales”. This case study will be researched to understand the overall of the case study and the most topics of this case study will be shown because all of the information in this case study is important. (Patric, L 2014)The main statement of this research is to share the success of marketing that they are willing to generate direct sales via digital marketing. Each hotel using the theory and method of digital marketing criteria to create positive results. The case study shows the information of three hotels that using digital marketing to increase their direct and website sale. All three hotels had a high number of website sales and almost similar to direct sales around 20-31% which is has a value of more than 50k euro that’s from incremental website sales. This case study shows how important digital marketing trends are and does not have alternative ways much for this case study that they focus on the result of digital marketing. The solution of this case study is about adopted basic theory and practical term of digital marketing and the reason behind this proposed solution is about to increase profit and make business running which is has a few steps and it already appears on literature review on this report such as SEO, SEM, Brand Protection, Reputation management, and Meta-search. The recommendation is that most of the hospitality industry must be adopted more technology and theory about digital marketing in depth to increase potential and realize the importance of digital marketing. 5.Discussion and conclusion The main objectives of this research were to get data and analyze to prove that the digital marketing system has an impact and become one of the important roles to the hospitality industry. In gathering data, the authors use quantitative and qualitative methodology as it corresponds with the perception of nowadays lifestyle people. This includes the test of knowledge about digital marketing for the general public. The reason for choosing this topic is about awareness of innovative technology that has improved digital marketing more in the future and it plays a vital role to the hospitality industry company profit that digital marketing has become the main source of advertising for the hospitality industry such as hotel, restaurant, airline, travel agent. All of them use digital marketing to communicate with their customers via digital media. This research also describes the fundamentals of digital marketing which helps readers to become aware of the history of digital marketing and how they improve to become more attractive to customers. The survey result revealed that gender doesn’t have an effect on digital marketing which means digital marketing can attract both genders. Most digital marketing affects teenagers because of the accessibility of the internet by users. This increases the hospitality industry’s awareness of the new generation of people. Although of the participant’s age, gender, education levels, most of them were on the same side in how they saw digital marketing in the hospitality industry. Not a single participant was dissatisfied in this survey. At least they just felt normal about it. The only potential that can lead to dissatisfaction is safety in using the internet. The authors have felt about this research that all of the method and objective is interesting and challenging to research somethings that are beyond imagination about this topic. The information that was used in this research has expanded the author’s knowledge and vision about digital marketing, and may hopefully be beneficial in the future of the author's career in the hospitality industry. This research supports the fact that the digital market has a lot of impact on the hospitality industry Limitations and direction for future research The present research had a concern about qualitative and quantitative methods which one is most effective that can create potential in the finding and result section. and the result of the questionnaire survey is may be sustainable enough and had contained most of the necessary enough information to be an answer from the research topic. Future research will be considered to increase the effectiveness of qualitative with mixed with a quantitative method for great results and the outcome information from questionnaires that allow the author to use this research as the branch of the future research. The present study found out that quantitative via survey questionnaire method did not have enough potential to accumulate for evaluation data and research information which can cause miscalculations of information for research purposes. Future studies may seek new methods or criteria to identify information more precisely. All of information that gathers in the type of primary source may be applied for future research analysis as a secondary source which is helpful for most of the author needed to receive satisfaction about digital marketing trends and how important it. Reference Ankur. 2018 Why Marketing is important in the hospitality industry. 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Retrieved from the https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4068287.html Rashi Sood. 2019 Why digital marketing is important for a hotel business. Retrieved from the https://blog.ziploan.in/why-digital-marketing-is-important-for-hotel-business/ Shivendra Tiwari. 2018 History of Digital Marketing: The evolution that started in the 1980s. from the https://www.digitalvidya.com/blog/history-of-digital-marketing/ Statista Research Department. 2018 Global travel and tourism industry Statistics & Facts. Retrieved from the https://www.statista.com/topics/962/global-tourism/ Veal, A. 2006. Research methods for leisure and tourism. 3rd edition. Prentice-Hall.Retrieved from the https://books.google.fi/books?vid=9780750686938&redir_esc=y&hl=en Young T.J. 2016. Questionnaires and Surveys. In Zhu Hua, Ed. Research Methods in Intercultural Communication: A Practical Guide. Oxford: Wiley, pp.165-180. Retrieved from the https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316228107_Questionnaires_and_Surveys Appendices Appendix A https://plagiarisma.net/users/p3IjLKOuqTEiDTqgLJyfYzAioD==/JOB8SQO3N.html
