Transformation of Marketing Strategy by Metaverse in the Hospitality Industry Facing Crisis

Introduction

Marketing is an important and inseparable part of every industry and there is no confusion in that. It supports the backbone of each and every sector by maximizing profit through well-planned and structured strategies (Ip et al., 2011). The hospitality industry is also no exception from it. It is the second-largest manpower-driven industry where marketing strategies play an important role. Marketing strategies that were applied till 2019 in the hospitality industry suddenly faced a crisis period due to COVID 19 pandemic and henceforth all the processes need to be restructured as the whole world started to live in the phase of ‘new normal’. Till 2019 marketers used online and offline strategies to maximize the number of guests in the hospitality sector. But with the advent of a new normal phase, a 360-degree transformation took place in marketing strategies, instead of both online and offline, marketers focused totally on online-based strategies to target the customers. Different initiatives are taken into action to get the faith and loyalty of guests like – search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), boosting digital marketing (DM) platforms, and trying to increase customer satisfaction (CS) by posting more visual contents of hotels, content marketing (CM), etc (Law,et al., 2014). New generations and the Millennial found this online marketing process absolutely hassle-free, time-saving, and worthwhile for them, instead of other processes. Thus there is always a point of discussion whether only this new transformative strategy will be continued or alike before the crisis period, both online and offline strategies will be needed for the hospitality industry to survive in the future (Yoo,et al., 2011).

The travel and tourism sector offers an appropriate backdrop for examining the impact of advanced technology on relationship marketing since it is one of the businesses that have adopted information and communication technologies (ICT) most quickly. Buhalis claims that these innovations bring created additional growth plans for creating, developing, and commercialising client connections through a better comprehension of consumer needs as well as the fulfilment of their demands. Moreover, developments in integrated multimedia broadcasting, ICT, browser innovations, plus their confluence might effectively help to streamlining the procedure for obtaining and analyzing information related to consumers' particular requirements (Williams, A. 2006). In more detail, integrated multimedia television (iMTV) describes the growth of new communication networks that may deliver a variety of multimedia as well as World Wide Web applications. In contrast, Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a promising technology that may be implemented in next smart phones & digitized broadcast networks to offer cutting-edge characteristics as well as additional communication services. To allow effective collection and analysis in tourism relationship marketing, this article offers a technological interaction model that elaborates on the convergence of IMS and iDTV systems (Wang, Y., & Qualls, W., 2007). The suggested system makes it easier for tourist businesses to follow individuals' choices but instead give clients greater economic benefit through personalised services since dynamic marketing strategy depends on clients' data. Because they would have a thorough understanding of the behaviour and preferences of their current or future clients, marketers will be able to base their judgments on marketing activities that are considerably greater expense. Statistical techniques, such as predicting visualization tools, are suggested in order to enable effective information analysis and processing and to best forecast future purchase trends (Pirnar, et al., 2010)