Social Networks and Societal Strategic Orientation in the Hotel Sector: Netnographic Study

摘要

In the marketing literature of sustainable tourism, a debate is emerging around the perception of guests and their behavior regarding the sustainable aspects of a hotel. Clients leave electronic traces in all travel-related activities, providing comments on community websites or through online surveys. Hence, social networks offer a valuable database of feedback about guest stays in hotels. Since the studied context is still emerging and needs to be explored, we have initiated a Netnographic study as a method of data collection. Our research proposes to study the comments on the travel website "HolidayCheck" of guests who have had a recent experience in a Tunisian hotel of the international channel MagicLife (ML). The aim is to explore the main facets of a hotel's societal strategic orientation in their verbatim namely: physical well-being, psychological well-being, environmental orientation, social relations and economic contribution. The results indicate the presence of the societal dimensions in the online evaluations of the guests but in a disproportionate way. Positive and negative connotations are also present in the feedbacks of these guests. The major implications for hoteliers highlight the need to understand how potential consumers perceive societal dimensions and possibly how this affects their reservation interests. Also, this study allows optimizing the hotels' decision-making and investments in societal strategic orientation.