Noorderplantsoen, still involved with social media?

Hey readers,

Here I’m again! This time I want to discuss the well-known Noorderplantsoen! I have cycled through the Noorderplantsoen with my goPro and made a short-movie to introduce the Noorderplantsoen.

Especially for the Noorderplantsoen I was curious about the usage of social media and if it referred to their social media, since the Noorderplantsoen seems not to need any of these, because who isn’t familiar with Noorderplantsoen?

Indeed, when visiting Noorderplantsoen I didn’t immediately see something that referred to social media! However, when cycling through the Noorderplantsoen I saw a sign with goodbye, and then the website of Noorderplantsoen. Later, I came across an almost identical sign with welcome.

I have investigated their website and actually it surprised me. They actively post on their website with news and other articles that are related with Noorderplantsoen. Additionally, they are sending news letters to everyone who signs up and they also regularly post tweets on Twitter.

Twitter is an interactive platform which also enables people to tweet about Noorderplantsoen. I searched for the tag #Noorderplantsoen and I came across for example this.

This tweet entailed a picture which promotes the movie about Noorderplantsoen. It’s a documentary about the Noorderplantsoen which takes place in a café.

Furthermore, I came across a lot of people tweeting photos which they have shot in Noorderplants and which they want to share.

Additionally, the account of Noorderplantsoen called @Plantsoenbuurt retweets which is equivalent to shares a lot of these tweets and in this way everybody keeps track on all the news around Noorderplantsoen. Eventually, they have 1098 followers.

So I would say, that Noorderplantsoen is quite active on social media and also interacting to the consumers to let them know what is still possible in Noorderplantsoen. Eventhough, it might seem to be unnecessary, I think this is a good way to keep people remembering that the Noorderplantsoen remains beautifull to visit!

See you next time,

Melisse

Not a similar park as the Noorderplantsoen, but still the idea is the same! I have visited this in Chenzhou which is in China. 

Martinitoren, a touristic place itself

Dear followers,

In this article we’re going to talk about the Martinitoren! I have to admit, that I have never climbed the Martinitoren, so maybe I should feel a little bit ashamed. However, I will be writing about the Martinitoren’s social media! Because one of the first things tourists would like to see in Groningen is the Martinitoren, so is social media still relevant?

My visit to the Martinitoren was very short, since you needed to pay when you wanted to enter the Martinitoren. I wanted to make a picture of the Martinitoren, but due to its height it was very difficult to see the Martinitoren in one shot! Therefore, I made a short movie.

I definitely had to search for things that could refer to social media, and in the end I came to the conclusion that there was just nothing that was referring to their web page or other social media. When searching on the internet, there’s indeed no website specifically for the Martinitoren. Kind of strange, but probably this could be explained by the fact that it’s part of the Martinikerk. In fact, I was able to find something that referred to the website of the Martinikerk. 

This QR-code is for the people with a smart phone convenient to use, however for the elderly this will be useless. On the website, I had to search for a while before I could find the part on the Martinitoren. Additionally, when considering the other social media, I could not find very active usage. The twitter page was lastly used in 2013 and Facebook posts no messages. Despite this, on Facebook it has a lot of positive ratings and people post photos on Facebook located at the Martinitoren are also shown. However, in short I would say that the Martinitoren is just very popular and does not put a lot of emphasize on social media to increase its visitors. 

Hope you enjoyed this article, 

Melisse 

Although I haven't climbed the Martinitoren, I have climbed (part of) the Chinese wall! 

Hotel Prinsenhof, is it worth its money?

Hello readers,

Today I’m going to elaborate on my visit to the hotel Prinsenhof.

I’ve not been inside Hotel Prinsenhof, but I was able to look from the outside. Hotel Prinsenhof is a quite expensive hotel which is near to the Martinitower and of course lies within the Prinsentuin.

When considering the Prinsenhof, I was very interested in the consumer side, because with hotels and other accommodations it’s common to give feedback on your stay. This can be done for example at www.booking.com. The relevance of online reviews on the online sales performance of hotels is investigated by some researchers. ¹ Specifically, they developed a model investigating the impact of three variables describing user-generated content (UGC) namely the number of online reviews, their mean value and their variance on the online sales performance of the hotels. The model also considers the online sales’ impact of other variables such as hotel star rating and prices and size of the hotel city. Results reveal that travellers’ reviews have a significant impact on online sales, with a 10% increase in traveller review ratings enhancing online bookings by more than five percent.

This is a very interesting outcome and I’ve searched for hotel Prinsenhof on booking.com. Hotel Prinsenhof is rated with a 9.4, which is very high and has 799 assessments which is fairly high. The assessments are in general very positive so I would conclude that this can only benefit Hotel Prinsenhof.

My visit to hotel Prinsenhof was not very special, I could not find a lot of things that were related to social media. However, I found this little tile with QL Hotels which refers that this hotel belongs to one of the 120 quality hotels in the Netherlands.

In conclusion I can say that hotel Prinsenhof has a good position on booking.com which can help them to attract more consumers. However, they don’t refer to their website which links to the social media they manage. So, consumers that are just walking by are not specifically referred to visit their website including social media.

See you later,

Melisse

This was one of the most luxurious hotels I have been in China, it was in Chengdu and we were eating for the first time with sticks. 

Reference:

1.       Ye, Q., Law, R., Gu, B., & Chen, W. (2011). The influence of user-generated content on traveler behavior: An empirical investigation on the effects of e-word-of-mouth to hotel online bookings. Elsevier, 27(2), 634-639.

The rise of travel blogs

Hello everybody, 

Today I’m going to talk about a relatively new phenomenon: Travel blogs! Personally, I love to read and follow on the internet travel blogs. As I have stated in my previous blog post, the theory web 2.0 touches upon the changing role of the consumer and a travel blog is a perfect example to illustrate this.

Consumers used social media as a tool to plan travelling so it functioned namely in the research phase. Trust was of big importance for consumers to use social media as a guideline. However, the internet has grown to a participatory platform which enables people to have influence on the internet as well. People can collaborate and share information. The ability to share information by means of social media have made substantial changes in the role of the consumer.

This theory is totally proven by the website: travellab.nl, one of my favourite travel blogs.

Travellab, is a dutch blog written by Serena, Larissa and Tara. Their passion for travelling has made them set up the blog Travellab, on which they write weekly 2-3 articles. On social media is Travellab very active, they post nice pictures on Instagram, have a Facebook-page and post on Youtube as well.

Travellab receives monthly more than 230000 views and attracts roughly 53000 unique visitors.

These statistics are quite impressive, and this is also the interesting part for me as well as for the companies of course. Because, we have covered the sharing part of the consumers role, but how does Travellab collaborate with companies? Well, Travellab collaborates with companies by advertising. They promote for them by writing articles about these companies and receive money for this, because companies feel that they have to a certain extent influence on other consumers. Additionally, travellab can sometimes travel for free if they are promoting a certain country/city/hotel/air carrier. Awesome, isn’t it? So for them the role of consumer has certainly changed in a positive way!

And I enjoy reading them, so we have a win-win situation!

See you next time,

Melisse 

P.S. one fun fact, in the past, I have also written my own blog. This was on makeup, lifestyle and fashion, but I have deleted the blog, since I'm not active anymore.

Welcome to InteractiveTourism :)

Hello everybody,

I would like to welcome you to my blog InteractiveTourism. This is my first blog post and I will be explaining what the main purpose of my blog will be. 

According to one of the readings that we have read during our course Passions of Tourism, tourism has expanded to a major contributor of the global flows of people including a wide range of activities and therefore is said to be one of the largest industries in the world. Thus, this industry seems to be relevant for firms. With regard to our assignment, I had to choose a theme to investigate tourism so that I will visit the tourist attractions with a certain angle. My theme will be social media and I will take several theoretical concepts into account to form an opinion on the tourists attractions and its usage of social media in the city Groningen. This will be a large part on my blog, namely to apply theories on the things that I’ve observed. There is one main theory that I will be using all the time, namely Web 2.0. Web 2.0 states that from the supplier as well as the consumer side numerous things have changed, such that there is increasingly more interaction between the supplier and consumer which causes collaborations between those two. I find this very interesting and to keep on track on this in a more concrete way, I have set myself the following 3 objectives:

1.       Find out if social media are an effective tool to attract more tourists to tourist attractions in Groningen, so is the popularity of some tourist attractions due to their social media strategy?

2.      Whether the tourist’s usage of social media also influences the popularity of tourist attractions.

The internet has become a giant medium which influences tourists significantly. Tourists are able to share their experiences and this will in turn influence other tourists to visit a tourist attraction or not.

3.       To explore if I’m going to find at the tourist attractions things that put emphasize on social media. Most of the tourist attractions I have already visited, so this time it would be interesting to especially focus on the things that might link to social media.

At the end of my blog I will give an overview of everything that I have observed during my visits. Additionally, I will focus on my 3 objectives and elaborate on them to provide a good conclusion.

Finally I would like to say: 

Have fun reading my blog!

See you next time,

Melisse 

Me being a real tourist in Chengdu situated in China a few years ago!

I think I will be posting every blog post one personal picture to give some extra personal touch to my blog! Just for fun, hope you'll like it!