The extent of use of basic Facebook user-generated content by the national tourism organizations in Europe

The social networking sites or the social media have enormous number of users. Currently, Facebook is the most used social media on the Internet and is among the most popular websites in Europe and worldwide. National tourism organizations in Europe should capitalize on those facts, especially using Facebook user-generated content. Facebook offers many ways for tourism promotion using features like Pages and Groups. The purpose of this paper is to identify how many NTOs in Europe have an official presence on Facebook and to determine the extent of the use of basic Facebook user-generated content (Pages and Groups). The research results showed that about half of NTOs do not have an official presence on Facebook, almost one-third of them have Facebook Pages, and almost a fifth of them have a Group. Besides the insignificant Facebook presence, NTOs do not use all the advantages that are offered by user-generated content. All trends show that Facebook community will continue to grow. NTOs should consider using Facebook in the next couple of years, as an effective marketing strategy.


Introduction
Millions of computer users worldwide have begun exploring the Internet and have joined one or more on-line communities that have sprung up to serve consumer needs for communication, information, and entertainment (Wang, Yu, & Fesenmaier, 2002). People have begun using social networking sites to connect to others in a wide variety of ways, including dating, meeting others with common interests, sharing information. Chung & Buhalis (2009) point out that users participate in virtual travel communities for a wide range of purposes, which may include fun, companionship, and demonstration of expertise, enjoyment, and amusement as an end in itself. Social networking has made it simple to develop relations that transcend age, race, culture and geographical differences (Graham, Faix, & Hartman, 2009).
In the past couple years Facebook is one of the most visited websites in the world, and the most visited social networking website (White, 2009). In April 2009, Facebook announced that it had reached 200 million members, and barely over three months later, in July the number of members rose to 250 million (McEntegart, 2009). As Facebook has increasingly focused its attention on global expansion and increased penetration across countries and regions, the site has catapulted to the six ranked web property worldwide with 275 million visitors in February 2009, a 175% increase versus a year ago. One of the global regions that best shows its growth is Europe, where the site has seen a 314% increase to nearly 100 million visitors (Anon, 2009a). At the same time, nearly 60% of European on-line consumers are involved in social computing (Kemp, 2007). Facebook use is 4.1% of all minutes spent on-line in Europe. Facebook also accounts for a full 30.4% of minutes spent in the social networking category (Anon, 2009a).
These facts cannot be ignored by national tourism organizations (NTOs) which have an important role in creating awareness among international and national markets. Different travel and tourism organizations are beginning to realize the importance of using the power of on-line communities (Wang & Fesenmaier, 2003). Using the power of social media, NTOs are encouraging residents, local businesses, visitors and third-party suppliers to tell the destination's story. NTOs can create and sponsor their own pages, groups, pay for advertisements, run polls, create applications that users can include on their own pages.
Despite the growing popularity of Facebook and it currently being the most influential social medium in the world, there are no significant studies that had examined the use of Facebook by NTOs. In travel and tourism, past research has focused attention on the sociopsychological aspects of social media use (Illum, Ivanov, & Liang, 2009). Therefore, this paper fills the gap by presenting research on the extent of use of Facebook by NTOs. The focus of this paper is on Facebook Pages and Groups, which represent user-generated content (UGC -content that is created, edited, viewed, and shared by users in Web 2.0 (Carrera, et al., 2008)). By using Groups and Pages, NTOs act as Facebook users. NTOs do not have to pay for such promotion, which gathers communities of costumers and influences travellers' booking decisions (Gretzel & Yoo, 2008;Hennig-Thurau & Walsh, 2003;O'Connor, 2008;Pan, et al., 2007). In this paper, the authors will examine how many NTOs in Europe have official presence on Facebook and determine the extent of use of basic Facebook user-generated content (Pages and Groups).

Social media and tourism
Social media are an emerging technology that is beginning to have a significant influence on how people communicate (Andrad & Hilary, 2009). While there is a lack of a formal definition, "social media" can be generally understood as Internet-based applications that carry UGC, which encompasses media impressions created by users, typically informed by relevant experience, and archived or shared on-line for easy access by other impressionable consumers (Blackshaw, 2006). Blackshaw & Nazzaro (2006) point out that social media exist in various forms and serve many purposes. UGC supported through social media are a mixture of fact and opinion, impression and sentiment, experiences, and even rumour (as cited in Graham, Faix, & Hartman, 2009).
Social media have noticeably emerged on the Internet, underscoring changes that can significantly affect the travel and tourism industry (McGrath, 2008;Sigala, 2007). Hjalager (2010) even stresses that social media are gaining importance to such an extent that they are likely to entirely change (destination) marketing practices but the wider impacts of this massive technology push on the business of tourism, destinations and subsequent innovations, still has to be investigated.
Social media represent various forms of UGC such as blogs, virtual communities, wikis, social networks, collaborative tagging, and media files shared on sites (Xiang & Gretzel, 2009) such as YouTube, Flickr, Veoh and Dailymotion. Buhalis (1998) stresses that consumers increasingly become familiar with the emergent ITs. The potential tourists have become more independent and sophisticated in using a wide range of tools to arrange for their trips (Buhalis & Law, 2008). They expect to become active firms' partners for creating and consuming their personalized product and through social networks, customers can generate value for and from each other (Sigala, 2008). Page (2009) points out that the first wave of Internet technology created an on-line travel community where tourism businesses were able to communicate with consumers through electronic media. This has been followed by a new wave of Web-based communities known as Web 2.0, also described as social media, where the on-line content is created by on-line users and made available to other users by means of Web 2.0 technology. The emergence of Web 2.0 brings together the concept of social networking/virtual communities and applies it to the tourism industry (Chung & Buhalis, 2009). The importance of this technology is that it allows consumers to communicate about social themes such as holidays and travel.
Tourism organizations were some of the first to utilize the resources of the Internet, but we are seeing one area of significant Internet innovation in the widespread development of user generated content that would appear to have enormous potential for tourism organizations (Akehurst, 2009). As previously stated, NTOs are beginning to realize the importance of using the power of social media. Visit Britain formally launched their new social media initiative. Using software developed by Digital Visitor, Visit Britain enables visitors and residents to upload videos, still images, and make reviews on their own and others' contributions (Anon, 2009e). Mexico's tourism board will use social media, to combat negative publicity. The plan is to promote Mexico's tourist destinations via online communities, which will index content related to specific destination and facilitate user interaction via blogs and viral tools (Anon, 2009c). Still, NTOs have been very slow to respond to the global marketing opportunities presented by the rapid emergence of Web 2.0 applications and technologies (Hamill, 2009). O'Hare stresses that (2009) each NTO now has another tool to market their product to travellers. However, the adoption of Web 2.0 has been relatively slow compared to the pace of change of technology and the most tourism enterprises are at an early stage in applying Web 2.0 concepts to their businesses (Schegg, et al, 2008). The Web has several popular social media websites that are designed to help social interaction between friends and build on-line communities. The examples of hugely popular general social media sites are: MySpace.com, Friendster.com, and Facebook.com (Pfister & Tierney, 2009). Middleton (2009) underlines that social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, take user control a stage further, allowing people to build their own on-line communities by linking their personal page to those of their friends. Beside communities based on off-line relationships, users can join groups linked by an experience. Facebook is different from other social media websites as most of Facebook users are met off-line and then added later (Ross, et al., 2009).

Facebook -short history and characteristics
Facebook is a website that was launched on February 4, 2004 and has become one of the most popular websites in history. Originally, it was available only to Harvard students, then it opened to students at other colleges and universities. In September 2006, it was opened to any user with an e-mail address, 13 years old or older. Their decision to open to nonstudents was followed by a huge surge in users (Alba & Stay, 2008 (Graham, 2008). Alba and Stay (2008) stress that almost overnight, and for many reasons, Facebook went from "college social networking" to something professionals wanted to be involved in. They point up the primary reasons include the following: a huge user base; users are spending significant time on Facebook; user demographics are different from other social networking sites; Facebook has a history of introducing useful, enticing features for the users; and Facebook allows developers to create new applications that users can add into their own Profile.
Facebook currently has one site at the URL http://www.facebook.com that provides access for its users worldwide (LLC, 2007). Facebook is made up of many networks, each based around a workplace, region, secondary school or university.
Facebook enables its users to present themselves in an online profile (using text, pictures and video), gather "friends" who can post comments on each other's pages, and view each other's profiles. Facebook members can also join virtual groups based on common interests, see what classes they have in common, and learn each others' hobbies, interests, musical tastes, and romantic relationship status through the profiles (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007 (Middleton, et al., 2009).
As mentioned above, Facebook can also be a good business tool. The main actions that a business can do with Facebook are: (1) keep track of employees; (2) stay up with the competition; (3) attract potential customers; (4) virally spread brand image; and (5) organize teams (Alba & Stay, 2008). Still, the most significant use of Facebook is as a marketing tool. The beauty of using Facebook as a marketing tool comes from the endless ways in which a business can have free advertisement (Groups, Inbox, Applications, Notes etc.) (Anon, 2008).

Methodology
The purpose of the research was to identify how many NTOs in Europe have an official presence on Facebook and to examine the extent of use of Facebook Pages and Groups, as very important UGC. For the research, the authors used data on all 39 NTOs that are members of the European Travel Commission (ETC). Data collection and analysis was conducted in June and July 2009.
The first focus of the research was to discover the existence of an official presence of NTOs on Facebook. To gain those results, the authors used the internal Facebook search engine combined with the search engine provided by Google. The keywords used for search were country names, official NTO names, website URLs and e-mails. Because there were a vast number of search engine results, the authors had to double-check every Facebook Page or Group to confirm its authenticity. Authors examined only Pages and Groups that are clearly signed to be administrated by NTOs. Double-checking was also necessary because of the existence of many Pages, Groups with similar topics that are administrated by individuals and private companies.
The second scope of the research was to examine the extent of use of Facebook Pages and Groups. Using personal Facebook's Profiles, the authors observed the internal Facebook search engine results, the number of Page fans and members of Groups ("friends") and the use of Facebook tags, features or applications.

Conclusion
Facebook is the most popular social medium in Europe and in the world. Every NTO with limited resources will have to prioritize different areas of online marketing, including social media based on their current impact, as well as their longer-term potential (Anon, 2009d The average Facebook user is confronted with several obstacles in finding official NTO Pages and Groups. The main obstacles are the large number of search results on search queries and the use of sceneries and flags as Pages and Group pictures that do not match the type of the organization they should represent. The observation of those NTOs that use Facebook showed that they do not use all advantages offered by this form of usergenerated content. The most used Facebook features are those that are generated by the fans of Pages and members of Groups. This is also important, but the NTOs have to open more discussion, create applications, and upload photo albums and promotional videos. Facebook community is in constant growth (Ostrow, 2009) and will have more and more influence. A main task of an NTO is to promote its country as a tourism destination. Therefore, the authors recommend that NTOs should consider using Facebook, as a potentially effective marketing strategy for the next couple of years. This paper encourages NTOs in Europe to create their own presence on Facebook, and to expand the use of Facebook Page and Groups features and applications, as an effective UGC.