Sandra Perks, Danie Ferreira
Abstract
The increased use of digital platforms has prompted tourism businesses to adopt social media. Social media has become an important possible facilitator of tourism marketing. The purpose of this paper is thus to develop a conception model of social media adoption intention factors necessary for effective social media tourism marketing. The study used stand-alone desktop research and a systematic literature review to collect secondary data from academic textbooks, journal articles and internet resources on technology- and social media adoption intention. Data from both developing and developed countries were considered to enable a holistic theoretical lens to generate as many study variables as possible for the conceptual model. The proposed conceptual model contained five social media adoption intention factors, namely technology fit, innovation-, organisational- and human resource characteristics, and external business environment. This comprehensive proposed conceptual model may be tested in any developing or developed country while the variables identified within each factor can be used as a checklist to meet social media adoption intention requirements. Variables related to effective online marketing to increase tourism were also proposed.