Percepción de los usuarios para la mejora del uso de las redes sociales como canal de comunicación en el sector hotelero

Abstract

The Internet and online Social Networks are tools that generate great opportunities for companies. A new way of seeing communications and commerce in business sectors, both by the number of users found in these tools and by the new way to advertise and sell the products they offer. Although these tools have grown so much that they have even caused that the presence in Internet and online Social Networks has become obligatory to be competitive in some sectors. This happens in the hotel sector, where these tools have become the main source of information for tourists who are looking for hotels for their stays and try to get opinions from other customers. In this study we want to focus on online Social Networks in this sector, since after a check by the Social Media of the hotel sector and an exhaustive literary review about these ones, we can observe the concern of the hotels about the presence and use of these tools. Thus, we focus this study on the use of online Social Networks as a means of communication, and more specifically on the motivational factors of users of online Social Networks that influence on the acceptance of these online Social Networks as a means of communication between hotels and these users. Trying in this way that the hotels manage to capture a greater number of users in their online Social Networks and add a new channel of communication with their clients, achieving a greater satisfaction of their clients and a greater presence in Internet, which could report a greater number of customers. Through a literary review by previous studies, we will present a list of the most influential motivational factors when users of generalized online Social Networks use these ones to follow and communicate with the hotels, and we will be developed a causal map of the system with them, in which users of these Social Networks will analyze the most influential motivational factors when it comes to improving such use. The motivational factors exposed in this list and that will be analyzed throughout the study are: quality management (GC), available information (DI), external conditioning (CE), trust (C), perceived compatibility (CP), perceived usefulness (UP), attitude (A) and intention (I). The methodology used will be the collection of data and information through interview and survey of the interviewees and the use of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) as a technique used in data analysis, a technique that facilitates the development of causal maps. We interview 41 persons, generalized online Social Network users, and the results reflect that all the proposed motivational factors influence positively when users of generalized online Social Networks use these ones as a means of communication with hotels. It is not thought that there are more motivational factors exerting influences on such use, apart from those proposed, and there are positive influences among all the factors of the system. 17 In addition, the results show that the three most important factors in the regulation of system dynamics are available information (DI), attitude (A) and perceived usefulness (UP), and that the strategies of hotels in online Social Networks for to achieve this objective should be considered by distributing the effort in each one of the factors according to the extent of influence in the rest, focusing their greater efforts on the factors that influence greater on the rest. Thus, efforts in these strategies should be divided by motivational factors in the following order of preference: perceived usefulness (UP), quality management (GC), available information (DI), external conditioning (CE), trust (C), perceived compatibility (CP), attitude (A) and intention (I).