Using smartphones reservations for hotels in Barcelona for a business segment: empirical analysis

Abstract

This paper tries to demonstrate that virtual communities or social media influence the decision to buy tourism products. Specifically, we show that smartphone bookings made by business tourists coming to Barcelona are increasingly popular. The methodology used is first a comprehensive literature review on the topic, media and social networks as a means of tourism promotion and product recommendation. Then, the article goes on with quantitative method that converts the object of study into numerical data, with emphasis on the measurable objective and, therefore, requiring the use of statistics For this study we decided to devise a quantitative questionnaire which is usually the method of data collection by most usual research using this type of method. The multiple choice is an instrument for obtaining data and it is used to gather the information needed: facts, opinions, trends. Data collection was carried out for 4 months (May, June, July and August 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 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare social media are the media used by young people and where gender does not influence their use. However, the degree of use of Google+, Linkedin, TripAdvisor and Booking have no significant relationship, taking into account such variables as age and gender