Business tourist segment: empirical analysis in Spain about the influence of social media and smartphone in reservations for hotels

Abstract

Smartphones and social media influence the

decision to buy tourism goods, especially in the case of

business. Specifically, we show that smartphone bookings

made by business tourists coming to Barcelona are

increasingly popular. Methodologically, we devised a

quantitative questionnaire. Data collection was carried out

for 4 months in 2015 with n=1512. We conducted a sieve

with inclusion and exclusion criteria and which discarded all

participants who did not travel for business. The final sample

was 494 participants. We conclude that social media

(Booking, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and

Foursquare) are used by youngers because people have

known they belong to social network. Users consider the

information provided by the companies in social media

reliable. The most used means for contacting the

accommodation are phone and email. The more useful apps

are the hotels apps.