Social media marketing and electronic word-of-mouth in the hotel industry : A multiple case study on how hotels in Sweden use social media marketing and electronic word-of-mouth

This study investigates how hotels use social media marketing and electronic word-of-mouth to enhance hotel brand awareness and customer relations. The aim of this study is to examine how hotels use social media and electronic word-of-mouth to build and strengthen the hotel's brand awareness and the relationship between the hotel and customer. We conducted a multiple case study where we interviewed six hotels to find out how they use social media marketing and electronic word-of-mouth. The result shows that hotels use social media marketing in order to communicate and share information with customers and strengthen the customer commitment, but also to find out what customers think of the hotel. The result also shows that customer reviews have a great impact on the hotel's brand awareness and on the hotel's relations with customers. The result also shows that the hotel's brand awareness and customer commitment is strengthened when hotels actively use social media's various platforms and by responding to customer online review