Tourism Marketing in Facebook: Comparing Rural Tourism SME’s and Larger Tourism Companies in Finland

Abstract

Popularity of Facebook as a social media platform is growing. Alreadymore than 500 million people have joined Facebook. Also companies havenoticed the possibility of using Facebook as a marketing channel.However, not much is known on how hospitality and tourism businessesshould correctly use Facebook for. This exploratoty study compares theuse of Facebook of rural tourism SME's and some larger actors in thefield of tourism in Finland. The results show that there are manydifferences between small and large tourism companies, as smallercompanies have unnecessary pages and a lot less activity than largercompanies. However, causal relationships of activities and success arestill unknown and more research is needed on the topic ofFacebook-marketing in tourism.