PRACTICES AND PERCEPTIONS REGARDING ONLINE PROMOTION IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY: THE CASE OF GUESTHOUSES FROM ROMANIA

Abstract

Despite the increasing role of the online environment in the accommodation industry, little is known about Romanian small accommodation providers’ practices and perceptions regarding online promotion. This paper has the role of partially filling this regional knowledge gap, by investigating, in an exploratory manner, the extent to which Romanian guesthouses use some of the most popular online promotion tools (websites, specialized search engines, social media, blogs), and their perceptions regarding the utility of such tools. An online survey was conducted among managers/owners of 48 guesthouses from Romania, results showing that despite the fact that most of the investigated guesthouses allocate small budgets to promotion, they understand the increasing importance of online promotion, allocating significant parts of their promotion budgets to the online environment.