Title: Consumer democracy in hospitality industry: a study on the role of Facebook

Authors: Sudipta Kiran Sarkar; Norman Au; Rob Law

Addresses: School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17 Science Museum Road, TST East, Kowloon, Hong Kong ' School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17 Science Museum Road, TST East, Kowloon, Hong Kong ' School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17 Science Museum Road, TST East, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Abstract: Social media and social networking sites are often credited to have democratised consumer-to-consumer communication and empowered them. Service providing businesses on these days are constantly challenged through social networking sites by consumers on issues of quality of services, products and experiences that they have. Unlike in the past, consumers presently have been enabled with a more democratic medium of communication by user-generated content (UGC) in social networking sites that prevents service providers from manipulating opinions and views of customers to their favour. In the hotel industry, social networking sites, primarily Facebook, have enabled hotel guests to communicate with each other on their grievances, service dissatisfactions and critiquing hospitality service providers in their failure to provide quality, responsible and efficient services to them. This study examined the comments of guests in Facebook profiles of four major international hotels and the comments with a qualitative approach. The findings of this study had conceptual implications in relation to consumer democracy and managerial implications with respect to the hotels.

Keywords: social networking sites; SNS; Facebook; hotel guests; consumer democracy; consumer empowerment; hospitality industry; international hotels; social media; hotel management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJQRS.2014.060664

International Journal of Qualitative Research in Services, 2014 Vol.1 No.3, pp.219 - 231

Received: 03 Jun 2013
Accepted: 03 Oct 2013
Published online: 17 Jun 2014 *

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