The Role of Social Media Marketing in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry: A study on Bangladesh

At present, the hospitality industry has started to follow a social media marketing strategy as part of its marketing promotion to improve its brand value. This paper aims to find the various social media sites available in the hospitality industry. This paper seeks to identify the appropriate social media as well as suggest its benefit in the context of Bangladesh. It also aims to identify the importance of tourism marketing to reach actual and potential consumers. A mixed (qualitative and quantitative) method was used in the collection of primary data, whereas the random sampling method was used to obtain such data. This study also included elicited qualitative questions so as to accommodate understanding of the customer psychographics factors. The study will also determine the role social media marketing plays and how it operates in the tourism and hospitality arena, using a wide range of literature from academic articles, journals, and books. The research sample size is 270. The results of the study show that Facebook is one of the most favorable media for promoting the hospitality business. The study also tried to find out various aspects of respondent’s basic information as well as their personal choices and views.