Digital Marketing Practices and Economic Sustainability of Hotels in Bayelsa State

Abstract

Hotels as agents of economic transformation are often embroiled in competition. With the emergence of the internet, majority of these hotels now adopt digital marketing platform to contend with competition. The study sought to examine the contributions of digital marketing practices to the economic sustainability of hotels in Bayelsa state. This paper is specifically posed to ascertain the extent of online advertising in ensuring economic sustainability, to examine the influence of email marketing in enhancing economic sustainability and to explore the implication of adopting social media for marketing purposes on the economic sustainability of hotels. The population of study are the entire hotels in Bayelsa state while the assessable population are the ten topmost rated hotels with websites. The cross sectional survey design was employed in this study. Sixty (60) copies of questionnaire were purposefully self- administered on the respondents in their various hotels. From the 60 copies of questionnaire administered, 54 were found usable. This represents about 85% return rate. The collated data were analysed with mean and standard deviation while the formulated hypotheses were tested with the aid of STATA 15 using ordinary least square regression at 0.05 level of significance. The findings shows that all the forms of digital marketing exert positive and significant influence on economic sustainability of hotels. This paper conclude that hotels engagement of digital marketing contribute significantly to its economic sustainability. In the light of foregoing, this paper recommend among others that hotels develop interactive websites and continuously upgrade it to become user friendly.

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