Social media and its application in hospitality Silvena Dencheva, Ph.D. Assist.prof. in VUM-Varna

Social media is the generic place where users are publishing the content that they have created themselves and sharing that content with the masses through the virtual environment (Weber, 2009). According to Armstrong & Kotler (2007) traditional advertising is not able to be personalized, and relies heavily on one-way-communication with the audience. While social media is an online connection network consisting two-way interaction for the blogs, s for consumers, company discussion boards, chat rooms, consumer product, service review websites, internet discussion boards and forums.

Categories of social media Jobber & Chadwick (2013) claim that the media deserves to be also separated in four categories: a.social community media (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn); b.social publishing media (e.g. YouTube, Pinterest); c.social commerce media (e.g. TripAdvisor, Groupon); d.social element media (e.g. Come2Play, Zynga).

Types of social media SNSs - According to Mayfield (2008) the most popular type of social media  Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace and Bebo - The most famous SNSs Weblogs or Blogs - are like online journals with different topics, allowing individuals to discuss different issues.  Example of a famous blog directory is the Huffingtonpost.com which exists since 2005

Types of social media Combination of the two types of social media – SNSs and Blogs emerges the idea of Microblogging.  The most popular Microblogging example is Twitter.  Another type is the Wiki, which allows every person to input data as an author of editor. Most useful types of social media in the academic related spheres are the Forums or Message Boards. Forums – virtual learning space that shares common interests and topics. Thomas (2002)

Content Sharing= between 1 billion Online Content Sharing =7/24 information flow Feedback= customer interaction Promotion chance+ increasing popularity

Vander Veer (2010) claims that Facebook combines the best of the online forums and groups, blogs, shared photos and more. In 2014, Facebook was ranked as the most popular social network worldwide with the US market share of visits equal to 45.78%, where the absolute number of 1 % visits of market share is approximately 36.8 million visits (Google, 2014).

USE OF FACEBOOK INCREASING THE BOOKING RATE INCREASING THE POPULARITY LOW COST MARKETING TOOL INCREASING THE GUEST SATISFACTION PRESENTATION OF THE HOTEL EVENTS EASY RESERVATION OPPORTUNITY

- Hotel promotions can be used as a marketing tool by increasing the followers of the Facebook page owned by the hospitality enterprise.

-Users of Facebook is increasing by time. -Facebook can be used to reach a large audience within short time. Mobile application will allow clients to reach to the hotel easily.

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