Technology Innovation and Social Media as a Global Platform for Tourism Events

Abstract

With the development of technology and penetration of the internet, Web 2.0, and social media have a significant impact on individuals, and it rapidly dominated over the last few decades. Social media applications such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, WeChat, Blogs, and YouTube have become indispensable instruments and global platform for promoting tourism events and festivals towards tourism destinations. A vast number of active internet users on Facebook are habitually posting updates and sharing their images, which contribute to the tourism and business sectors to create a relationship among the consumers. Customers involve in social media platforms to study tours, taking decisions regarding their trips, and share their knowledge of particular events and festivals. Event organizer, in particular, has a significant impact on the tourism industry but there is still a gap between event and festival organizations because they are still incompetent to utilize their full potential. This study explores the issues and challenges and discusses the multiple phase experience of social media for tourism event and festival promotion to perceive the nature, degree of social media use in the festival, and how social media promote consumers in terms of giving better information on tourism events.