Use of Social Media Group in Tourism- Challenges and Prospects: A Study with Respect to West Bengal
Dr. Moon Jana
Assistant Professor, Asutosh College, Kolkata
The technological shift in all spheres of life has left us spellbound and amazed and has ushered in a whole generation of connected consumers who thrive on information and communication. Today social media has emerged as the new medium of communication across the generations. The growing appetite for involvement is a sign of a more open society that empowers its citizens to participate with technology as a catalyst for change. Social media represents a cost-effective, high-reach, just-in-time strategy and since West Bengal provides so many diverse and exotic attractions for tourists, it’s ideal to promote via the rich mix of approaches possible through the digital way. Tourists generally move to destinations they think better for relaxation, break, and recreation and their choices of destinations depend upon the information they get from different social media. That is how, they choose destinations based on what they have heard from diverse sources like peer groups, colleagues, etc, read or seen from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Trip Advisor, Blogging, LinkedIn, Flicker, and Pinterest. Social media can be instrumental in creating an image of the place even before the tourist arrives there, through various reviews, blogs, and opinion-based sites. This also ensures better reach on the part of the various tourist destinations.
The researcher aims to find out the role of the Facebook tourist destination groups in promoting tourism. And for this, the researcher apart from studying the secondary literature will also analyze 2 well know West Bengal based Facebook tourist destination groups to understand how those Facebook tourist destination groups help to promote tourist destinations.
Keywords: Social Media, Tourism, West Bengal, Communication, Technological Shift.
The above paper is presented at National Media Management Conference on Communicating Tourism: Media, Soft Power, and Management powered by In-Depth Communication.
16 November 2019 | St. Xavier’s College, Kothavara, Vaikom, Kerala
All abstracts have been published in conference souvenir with ISBN 978-1-647337-82-7