Use of Social Media Platforms in Marketing and Promotional Strategies by Hotel Industry (India) to Fight Against Covid Crisis, an Analytical Study

Abstract

Covid, a global crisis has affected every aspect of life, business and economy are worst hit after loss of human life. It is imperative to study how the business communities are making their marketing communication, promotion strategies to face the Covid effects. Hospitality industry is severely hit due to lockdowns, people were scared to come out of house. A convincing message was needed to win their confidence back .This Study's objective was to identify the important social media platforms that the Hotel Industry used to promote their business during the COVID pandemic. For the study, the descriptive and analytical research design was adopted. Further, the data was collected from 96 hotels, 397 customers were approached, and data was collected using a quota sampling technique. Herein for the study quota considered was the customers who approached the hotels after seeing the advertisements of hotels on social media. Through the analysis carried, it can be interpreted that most of the approaching hotels through social media advertisements is from the  age category of 31-40 years, followed by the age category between 20-30 years. Further, it was understood that male customers coming to hotels through social media influence is slightly higher than female. From the analysis, it can be further interpreted that Communicative social media such as WhatsApp, Video-based social media such as YouTube, and Facebook are the most influential social media, while blogs, website pop-up advertisements, and professional social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter are least influential social media platforms for attracting the customers to hotels.