Chapter 16: Digital Tools: Their Value and Use for Marketing Purposes

The aim of this chapter is to present in a pedagogical way the main digital tools used by tourism-related businesses, especially by hospitality businesses. The main purpose of this chapter is to illustrate our discussion with concrete examples and to give a set of advices for efficient use of those tools.

Literature review was conducted on conceptual issues, as well as managerial and marketing aspects of digital tools, their value and use in the hospitality industry.

This chapter highlights the fact that needs in terms of digitalisation depend on the size of the hotel. The main differences can be explained by differences in terms of hotel capacity, and digital technologies should be customised to different types of structures.

This chapter is exploratory in nature, based on a literature review.

It provides clear and practical guidance about the way independent hospitality businesses could use digital tools for marketing purposes. It also suggests the most efficient digital technologies to improve their performance in the field of marketing and customer relationship management.

The chapter demonstrates the huge gap between best practices in the hospitality industry and the way independent enterprises really use, in practice, the digital tools for marketing purposes. It shows how digital technologies could be used in a more efficient way, to take advantage of their full potential.