THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING AND ONLINE TRAVEL AGENTS TOWARDS THE BOOKING INTENTION OF HOTEL IN SURABAYA

Abstract

Hotel occupancy rate in Surabaya experienced a decline since 2017 with an average room occupancy rate of 54%. In order for a hotel to make a profit, the occupancy rate must be, at least, 60%. As a result of this declining in occupancy, hotels in Surabaya begin to rely on e-commerce platforms to support their marketing strategy to overcome the occupancy issues. A strategy that is commonly used is by maximize the use of social media and online travel agents. This research aims to discover whether social media marketing and online travel agents have significant effects to the booking intention of hotel in Surabaya. The research sample covers domestic people who use social media and online travel agents as a media to search for hotel information and booked a hotel room in Surabaya within the period of January 2019 to October 2019. The data collected is based on the Likert scale questionnaire which is distributed to 104 respondents. Then, the data was proceeded by multiple linear regression similarity model with SPSS. The result shows that a social media marketing has positive and significant effect towards the booking intention of hotel in Surabaya and online travel agents also has positive and significant effect towards their booking intention of hotel in Surabaya.