Tourism SMEs usage of Social Media Analytics as their Business Intelligence Tool

Abstract

This study delivers the results of the survey conducted to investigate the tourism SMEs' usage of social media analytics as their business intelligence tool. The study uses the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model to investigate the usage of SMA to tourism SMEs.  71 tourism SMEs were interviewed in Arusha and Kilimanjaro regions by filling the semi-structured questionnaires, then followed by the data analysis using MS excel and Python. The results of the findings show that the usage of social media analytics as a business intelligence tool for tourism SMEs is beneficial to them, however, findings show very few tourism SMEs are conducting social media analytics on their social media platforms. Most tourism SMEs use built-in social media analytics and they are performing simple metrics like counting the number of likes, comments, and shares. Further results explain that the majority of the tourism SMEs don't have more information and knowledge about social media analytics and tools used to perform social media analytics as well as they are performing social media analytics without following any implementation framework to guide the process. The study recommends that social media stakeholders increase awareness of social media analytics to tourism SMEs so that they could use it and get more advantages of using social media. Furthermore, researchers information systems analysts and developers develop social media analytics tools specifically for tourism SMEs and provide them step-by-step procedures that will help them in using and managing the social media analytics activities.