This book chapter will explore the role of social media towards promoting wellness tourism to achieve good health and the well-being of the tourists. The first section of the chapter will describe what is social media by providing a few definitions provided by various authors and giving an insight to the evolution of social media. Further, it will present the types of social media and the benefits of using social media. The next section will explain the fundamentals of social media marketing along with definitions, dimension scales, benefits, and the usage of social media according to the recent statistics. It will be followed by one of the popular social media marketing theories, technology acceptance model, analyzing its sub-constructs and its relationships to social media marketing. The subsequent section will explore the sustainability development goal three, which is ensuring good health and well-being for all at all ages listing the targets that they wish to achieve by 2030.
TopIntroduction
The behavior of internet users has significantly changed since the introduction of Web 2.0 which led business organizations to engage and interact with their customers through social media. Social media is an online platform and a tool which provides social interaction among its users via text, photos, and videos. Moreover, it allows two-way communication enabling interactive and interconnected communication among individuals, companies, and other stakeholders. It has brought many advantages for the businesses as well as the consumers, for instance searching for products and services, finding information regarding products and services, and checking peer reviews regarding several brands etc. Some of the examples for popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter etc. However, accepting and adopting these new social technologies greatly depend on the perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs of the users towards the technology. Among many technology acceptance models “Technology Acceptance Model” (TAM) developed by Davis 1989, is a psychology based simple model which has been frequently used in various contexts within the research.
Wellness tourism is one of the rapidly growing tourism segments according to the reports issued by the Global Wellness Institute (2019). This growth has directed the wellness tourism industry to offer both active and passive tourism activities within the hotels and retreats, wellness resorts and customized travel packages since it is considered as one of the niche markets for the tourists with high affordability. On the other hand, tourism service providers have started using the internet for their marketing activities, especially social media marketing over the past decade. Accordingly, the wellness tourism industry has also started using social media marketing strategies to a greater extent. In addition, it can be identified that the wellness tourism is directly linked to the Sustainable Development Goal 3 which is “Ensuring good health and well=being for all at all ages” since the main purpose of wellness tourism is to improve physical and mental health of the tourists.
Social media is one of the latest developments of Web 2.0 which enabled the users to interact with each other unlike traditional media channels (Zerman, 2022). Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) defined social media as,
“A group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content.”
Furthermore, Tuten (2020) described social media as,
“The new way to create a connection not only business to business, but also business to consumer, and consumers to consumers, and even consumers to machines.”
The organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has further highlighted that this user generated content should be published on either a public website or a social networking site and be creative. Further, it is required to be exempt from the professional purposes which excludes e-mails, instant messages, copying an existing article, and business-related content (OECD, 2006).
The history of social media goes back to 1979, when Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis created an international discussion system named “Usenet” which enabled the internet users to post public messages. Another development of social media is the invention of “Open Diary” by Bruce and Susan Abelson which connected the online diary writers together which led to the concept of blogging. Subsequently, the rapid expansion of internet facilities has led to the creation of further social media platforms such as “Myspace” and “Facebook” until the most recent addition which is “virtual worlds” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). However, the most popular social media platforms are blogs and microblogs such as Twitter, social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, media sharing domains such as YouTube, review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, and forums (Zerman, 2022). In addition, there are many types of social media networks available at present.
❖ Enterprise social media (Internal organizational communication tool)
❖ Mobile social media
❖ Bought media (E.g., Advertisements)
❖ Owned media (E.g., Websites)
❖ Earned media (E.g., Review sites)
❖ Personal social media (E.g., Facebook)
❖ Public social media
Social media allows many advantages to its users where some of them are listed below.
❖ Interactive and interconnected communication.
❖ Cost effectiveness.
❖ Ability to create and share content.
❖ Learning opportunities.
❖ Marketing activities
❖ Create electronic Word of Mouth.
❖ Easy access to connected devices.