Corporate Twitter use and stakeholder engagement: An empirical analysis of the Spanish hotel industry

Abstract

This study provides a general overview of the way in which hotel chains use Twitter as a communication tool to engage with their stakeholders. A sample of 109 of the largest Spanish hotel chains was examined, obtaining the result that the majority of them maintain an official corporate Twitter account. In addition, it was found that there is a significant positive relationship between a hotel’s size and its Twitter activity and a significant negative relationship between the audience and the stakeholder engagement. Moreover, the findings of the paper show that particular media and content types generate higher stakeholder engagement. Given that this is the first study of its kind, the paper offers both theoretical implications for the social media literature and practical implications for the hospitality industry.