Description
The importance of social media in enhancing positive relationships between customers and business cannot be gainsaid. This is because they offer new and innovative ways to communicate and network via the internet. Social media networking has become an effective form of marketing which has raised the brand awareness, brand loyalty, customer services and has led to increase in sales. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of social networking in service delivery in the hotel industry in Kenya. It sought to establish how hotels are utilizing social media in marketing so as to boost awareness among its customers. Stratified proportionate sampling procedure has been used to pick the hotels, the study used questionnaires to collect data.. A sample size of 190 employees was used. The study showed 94.1% of those sampled used social media. This was attributed to the high usage of internet enable smartphones. There was also a noted higher usage of the social media among the younger age groups compared to their old counterparts. Facebook and twitter usage topped the list of the highly used social media networks in the hotel industry that mirrored their usage in the social lives. There is different prevalence of the usage of diverse social media networks for different purposes such as marketing, sales, customer service and giving of information. In the context of marketing, 82.2% of the respondents utilized social media for marketing purposes of which the face book and Google plus topped the usage.Face book and twitter formed the highest used platforms for branding. The hotels used the social media platforms to a higher degree to elaborate on their location, available facilities, technical expertise of workers, and hotel menu among other factors
Keywords
Social media network sites, Service delivery, and Hotel industry
