The Potential Contribution and Uses of Twitter by Tourism Businesses and Destinations

The tools of Web 2.0 provide opportunities and challenges for the destinations and providers of tourism services to better listen to and understand their current and potential consumers. This article approaches the Social Media, and more specifically Twitter, as a tool for integrated communication with tourism consumers. It takes a strategic and operational marketing perspective to analyze the potential contribution of Twitter, from the point of view of tourism providers. Twitter is regarded as a source of and medium for interactive communication with customers. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to examine and suggest the ways in which tourism destinations and businesses could take advantage of Twitter as a channel of interactive communication and constructive dialogue. More specifically, it examines the potential contribution and possible uses of Twitter by tourism businesses in acquiring customer feedback.