An investigation into tourists' social media usage and perceptions: A study on accommodation establishments

Social media is a very important marketing and promotion tool for Accommodation establishments as well as other sectors. Therefore, the fact that accommodation establishments are on social media is of great importance for themselves and consumers. The main purpose of the study is to evaluate the effects of local tourist on their attitudes towards accommodation establishments and to determine the level of their perception of social media sites. While the universe of the study consists of local tourists who come to Aydın Kuşadası for holiday purposes in accommodation establishments; the sample consists of 447 local tourists selected by random sampling method in Kuşadası. The survey method obtained the study, which consisted of three main sections. In the first part, while determining the demographic information of the participants, in the second part, the social media usage scale was applied to tourism consumers, and in the third part, the perceptions of tourism consumers about social networking sites were surveyed. The 5-point Likert was used in the scale and surveys to determine the perceptions of social media usage and tourism consumers towards social media sites in accommodation establishments. SPSS 22 program was used in the analysis of the data. The distribution of personal information of the participants in the study was calculated. A normality test was performed to determine the tests deemed appropriate in line with the study data. Normality analysis for the Perceptions of Tourism Consumers About Social Networking Sites survey data and skewness and kurtosis values were examined as a result of this test. As a result; In the study conducted to determine the perceptions of social media use and local tourist towards social media sites in accommodation establishments, a significant difference was found according to the gender, age, and social media usage periods variables of the participants, while no statistically significant difference was found between the income level and education variable. It is also seen that consumers use social media platforms to advertise, obtain information and comment on accommodation establishments, thus using social networks as a consumption channel.