Selling rooms online: the use of social media and online travel agents [Summary]

Abstract

This paper aims to focus on the reason why hoteliers choose to be present in online travel agent (OTA) and social media websites for sales purposes. It also investigates the technological and human factors related to these two practices. The research is based on a survey sent to a wide range of hotels in a Swiss touristic region. The empirical analysis involves the specification of two ordered logit models exploring the importance (in terms of online sales) of both social media and the online travel agent, Booking.com.