The Use of Social Media as a Marketing Tool by Tourist Attractions: Influence on Cognitive, Affective and Behavioural Consumer Attitudes

Social media has an enormous influence on the manner in which people look for and distribute data, and select a tourist destination. Hence, research was undertaken to ascertain the role of social media as a communication and marketing tool for Cape Town tourist attractions (Cape Point, Groot Constantia Wine Estate, V&A Waterfront, Table Mountain Aerial Cable Way and Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens) via the analysis of tourists’ cognitive, affective and behavioural attitudinal responses. The results revealed that tourists displayed positive cognitive/affective and affective/behavioural attitude associations towards social media usage by the Cape Town tourist attractions. Several demographic and usage characteristics resulted in significant positive attitudes regarding Cape Town tourist attraction social media sites, viz. South African and African tourists; mobile device access; new social media users; daily log-ons; Black, Indian and Coloured tourists; and tourists who used the local Rand currency. The findings could be used by Cape Town tourist attractions to improve their social media platforms, and thereby the effectiveness as a marketing tool. The study makes an original contribution since few tourism-related studies investigated the hierarchy of effects model in terms of social media and most previous research only considered usage and demographic characteristics as descriptive measures.