Impact of Internet & Online Community Networking Application Essay

Web 2. 0 internet Technology allows users to interact and cooperate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. There are various Community Networking Application platforms provided by the social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to the marketing of products and services for the hospitality industry. Social network offers media technologies that can enable online functionality and monitoring perspectives wherein the data gathered can be used to improve their services for customer satisfaction. The hospitality industry can market themselves in social media and networking thus it can be use social media to engage customers and clients in dialogue and recognize their needs & wants. Through these networking sites, hospitality industry Web 2. 0 internet Technology allows users to interact and cooperate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. There are various Community Networking Application platforms provided by the social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to the marketing of products and services for the hospitality industry. Social network offers media technologies that can enable online functionality and monitoring perspectives wherein the data gathered can be used to improve their services for customer satisfaction. The hospitality industry can market themselves in social media and networking thus it can be use social media to engage customers and clients in dialogue and recognize their needs & wants. Through these networking sites, hospitality industry could interact with new & loyal guests before, during, and after of the guest staying experience. Social media is relatively new and the advantages are abundance such as it is affordable (no cost), it is viral and has the potential to spread brand awareness rapidly and far and it is said to be able to develop link baits, attention and massive amounts of webpage traffic flow. The purpose of this study is to evaluate Impact of Internet & Online Community  Networking Application (Web 2. 0 internet Technology) based on Budget Hotel in Klang Valley Introduction Hospitality industry play significant role in the world in terms of the numbers of employees and its effect on the community and economical development of a region or country. Hospitality means providing service to others, as well as demonstrating consistent excellence and quality. It should also mean profitably providing value at any price level, while demonstrating your own unique points of distinction. Most of all, hospitality should be a â€Å"place†, where people can still be exceptional individuals and they can extend their own personality and style (Hogan, 2008). The use of internet & networking application for basic functions for instance conferences, business meetings in distant places, training, designed routes and airlines, reservations and tickets purchased through computer systems, tourist shops, restaurants is becoming typical in hospitality industry. The hotels depend progressively on the resources of new information technology to follow and update the tools which allow an efficient development of activities in each section of the company, leading to better results for its management (Mendes-Filho & Ramos, 2003a). To Phillips and Moutinho (1998), information technology (IT) is one of the critical factors of success in the hotel industry. The debate over â€Å"high-tech† or â€Å"high-touch† is largely a thing of the past in the hospitality industry as emerging technologies drive unprecedented change in the way hotels operate and serve customers. It is clear that investments in technologies can generate greatly improved operating efficiencies, higher hotel revenues and enhanced guest services. The pace of change, however, has been so extreme as to leave many hotel organizations uncertain about what types of technology to adopt and the best ways to create a seamless integration of systems company-wide. In addition, investments made by many hotel owners and operators during the last five years have lagged as a result of the serious downturn weathered by the industry. Many hotel organizations are using technologies so outdated as to place their companies at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. (dchosenone, Jun 2009) The arrival of the Internet has increased the opportunities to boost the accommodation industry. Recently, hoteliers are fully aware of the benefits that the Internet can calaborate to their business. Well-informed of the far reaching importance of the web, they are motivated to create more awareness of their industry, on top of getting more bookings online. This had driven website development for hotels and resorts, the online reservation booking system, the increased number of reviews and redesigning of accommodation websites, as well as other tourism related online enterprises. As a matter of fact, there is a steady, daily growth of the web strategies for hotel and hospitality. The IT trends in the accommodation industry improve every day. Online marketing renewed the hospitality industry. Social bookmarking, mobile marketing (Runritz application), Web 2. online communities and all others have all added up to the change in the impact of the hospitality industry. The traditional booking system of hotels and resorts has been changed by the Internet. Thus potential guests can easily compare several hotel rooms & facilities and its rates offered by various hoteliers. Then there is the advancement of computer graphics and web photos that hoteliers had utilize to display their hotels’ pictures. In this way potential guests can take a virtual tour to feel the interiors and exteriors of their hotels and resorts. It has also become simple for clients to acquire info on hotels’ Rooms and Rates, amenities, facilities and promos. The emergence of Web 2. 0, allows one with unlimited amount of things the individual can do on the internet these days. The individual is not just restricted to emails or passively absorbing the static information that is available on the web pages when browsing. It used to be one-way but now the web is the platform where people can share information, hold a decent dialogue, build both social and business connections. Social media has recently been adopted by a small group of organizations’ integrated marketing plans. There by infusing a mix of advertisement, public relations, their sales promotion to produce a customer focused message. With the evolution of platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, we have the golden opportunity for exceptional access to the guest (Lanz, Fischhof, & Lee, 2010). Since social media is so available to anyone with an internet connection, it should be a platform that can be recommended to the ospitality industry to increase their brand awareness and facilitate direct feedback from their customers. A business that understands the advantage of social media is well aware that social media is essential in developing new business in the current competitive and online driven marketplace. Marketing is an important aspect for any company involved in business. As such, it is a competitive world out there, and social media marketing is the ‘new kid in town’ and it can reach out to the people accessing these social media platform regularly. Communication is essential for any corporation and business, therefore either they change the way information is conveyed or be prepared to lose some of the audience. It is imperative for marketing managers to continuously find a solution to appeal, keep new and current consumers (Schneider, 2009). Social network is the ideal platform for communication that applies perfectly with marketing in the virtual world. Social networks are groups of individuals who 3 prefer to communicate with one another through a preferred site based on the profile created for themselves (Laudon and Traver, 2007).