Use of Social Media by National Tourism Organizations (NTOs)

Mridula DwivediGD Goenka World Institute

Gurgaon, Indiamridula@gmail.com

Motivation for the Work

• Initial motivation from getting a follow from an NTO on Twitter

• Academic Review Process/Attitude to Social Media

• Lack of Data about NTOs

• Lack of Academic Literature on Social Media

Research Questions

• What is the extent of the use of social media by the NTOs?

• Which social media platforms are used by the NTOs?

• Which social media platforms are used more frequently?

Methodology• Largely Searched for Information on the Net

• How Many Countries in the World?

• We merged UNWTO and the UN list to arrive at 198 countries.

• In the end we refined the list to 195 countries.

• Then we located NTO/Embassy websites for 195 countries.

Findings

• 80 out of 195 (41%) NTOs are already using at least on social media platform.

• As there was no data available, we had anticipated it to be a more niche activity.

Findings- List of Platforms Used

• Be Local• Blogs• Facebook• Flickr• Forums • Koprol• Myspace• Orkut• Plaxo

• Plurk• Scribd• Tripadvisor (Links to

their Country)• Tumblr• Twitter • Youtube• WAYN

The Top Platforms

• Facebook- 63

• Twitter- 49

• Youtube- 49

• Flickr- 19

• 16 countries used all 4

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Facebook Twitter Youtube Flickr Blogs Myspace Tripadvisor Forum

Chart 1: Use of Social Media Platform by NTOs

Conclusions

• Finding out correct NTO Websites was a task in itself.

• Social media information could be buried somewhere on the website.

• Social media sites could be available to only some countries.

Conclusions

• Using Original Logos

• Not a niche activity anymore?

• Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Flickr emerged as the most popular platforms.

Conclusions

• Presence may not translate into use.

• Parameters for use- Promotion? Interaction? Feedback? Business? Others?

• Contests?

Thank You

• Questions?

• More Ways to Connect– http://blogs.gonomad.com/traveltalesfromindia/

– Twitter @mridulad

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