Abstract: Globalization, mobile computing and changes in consumer behaviour are aspects brought about by the new developments in IT that are changing the way business organizations conduct their business. Branding in travel and tourism industry is no exception and the practitioners must consider social media in their online branding strategies. This paper examines the extent to which the hotel industry uses Twitter social networking site in their branding strategies. The study used media content analysis to investigate 35 star rated hotels Twitter account in Kenya. Twitter posts timing, content type and engagement metrics were analysed. The results indicate that the timing of tweets and the Twitter post media type have a bearing on the rate of engagement. On the practical side, this study shades light on how Twitter is utilized by hotels for branding purposes and creates recommendations on how hotels can optimize customer engagement with their tweets. The study also enriches literature in the use of Twitter as a branding tool.
Keywords: Twitter engagement, social media in hotels, Social media branding, Twitter posting, timing of tweets
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DOI:
10.17148/IJARCCE.2019.8444
