Ranking social Media utilization among tourists to improve marketing innovation using Bayesian posterior probability and maximum posterior probability procedure (map): evidence from the hospitality industry in Ghana.

Abstract

The emergence of information technologies has impacted on hospitality organisations, productrelated processes and consumers’ experiences of the hospitality industry. Our study sought to examine the extent to which tourists patronizing hospitality facilities in selected cities in Ghana, use social media platforms, the period they utilize these platforms, the specific activities social media is deployed to perform and degree of use of social media in performance of these functions. A total of 800 tourists participated in this research. We measured their perception of the importance of social media on travel process in three different phases (pre-visit, on site, post-visit). Regarding inter-phase ranking of use of social media by tourist, our Bayesian posterior probability and the Maximum Posterior Probability Procedure weights shows that tourist mostly used social media platforms before their visits. We Further note that usage of social media in different activities in the respective phases differed marginally using the two weights.