Influence of social media management practices on hotel performance

Abstract Purpose: This paper aims to examine the influence of social media management practices on hotel performance. Originality/value: The hotel industry is undergoing organizational transformations due to the insertion of social media as a communication platform that engages customers. Given this, verifying whether social media can collaborate on internal resources and help the companies’ performance has been a potential source of studies. Design/methodology/approach: The study sample comprised 67 hotels. To this end, hotel managers conducted face-to-face interviews to collect data from their respective hotels. Data were collected using social media management practices and performance measures measured through RevPAR (a revenue division by total rooms available) and online review scores from Booking.com. Exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis were applied to evaluate the study’s hypotheses from a quantitative approach. Findings: It was evidenced that social media management practices can be categorized into monitoring and comment responsing practices and the dimension of responsiveness and information dissemination practices. These practices positively influence hotel performance measured through online review scores and revenue measured through RevPAR. Given the results, it is expected that hotels will have competitive advantages by managing their resources with the help of social media and that studies in this sector will gain more visibility.

摘要
研究目的：本文旨在探讨社交媒体管理实践对酒店绩效的影响。
原创性/价值：酒店业因将社交媒体作为与顾客互动的沟通平台而正经历组织转型。在此背景下，验证社交媒体能否协同内部资源并助力企业绩效提升，已成为相关研究的潜在议题。
研究设计/方法/途径：本研究样本涵盖67家酒店。研究人员通过与酒店管理者开展面对面访谈，收集各酒店的相关数据。数据采集采用社交媒体管理实践量表，并通过每可售客房收入（RevPAR，Revenue Per Available Room，即总营收除以可用客房总数）以及Booking.com平台的在线评分来衡量酒店绩效。本研究采用定量研究方法，运用探索性因子分析与多元回归分析对研究假设进行验证。
研究发现：研究证实，社交媒体管理实践可划分为监测与评论响应实践、响应性与信息传播实践两个维度。上述实践对以在线评分为衡量指标的酒店绩效，以及以RevPAR为衡量指标的酒店营收均存在正向影响。基于上述研究结果，预期酒店可借助社交媒体优化资源管理以获取竞争优势，同时该领域的相关研究也将获得更多学术关注。