Business Tourist Segment: Empirical Analysis in Spain about the Influence of Social Media and Smartphone in Reservations for Hotels

Abstract

Smartphones and social media influence the decision to buy tourism goods, especially in the case of business. Specifically, we show that smartphone bookings made by business tourists coming to Barcelona are increasingly popular. Methodologically, we devised a quantitative questionnaire. Data collection was carried out for 4 months in 2015 with n=1512. We conducted a sieve with inclusion and exclusion criteria and which discarded all participants who did not travel for business. The final sample was 494 participants. We conclude that social media (Booking, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare) are used by youngers because people have known they belong to social network. Users consider the information provided by the companies in social media reliable. The most used means for contacting the accommodation are phone and email. The more useful apps are the hotels apps