Assessing the Impact of Marketing Communication on the Performance of the Hospitality Industry in Akure, Ondo State (A Case Study of Some Selected Hotels in Alagbaka, Akure, Ondo State)

Abstract

Marketing communication is a management strategy that adopts the use of public relations, advertisement, sales promotion, personal selling, social media, web ads, direct marketing and oral communication as a tool for reaching out to her target audience thus the globally increasing competition in the hospitality operations. The study however examined the impacts of marketing communication and the impact of the social media marketing strategy on the performance of the hospitality industry in Ondo State. Some hotels were selected in respects of hotel ratings where patronage, number of rooms, services and facilities provided remained the yardstick for selection and five hotels were chosen from the State capital, Akure, Ondo State. The study adopted quantitative research. A total of 100 questionnaires were distributed to respondents and 85 questionnaires were retrieved. The results obtained showed overall mean score of 3.70 indicating that marketing communication enhances the performance of hospitality industry and data further showed that the R-value is 0.376^a, this indicates that there is a minimum or insignificant relationship between social media and the performance of the hospitality industry with a small amount of 46.6% while the value of R square is 0.141 suggesting that social media has little influence in the amount of 24.3% on the performance of the hospitality industry in the study area. The study concluded that marketing communication plays a major role in the performance of the hospitality industry. The Study recommends that the management of the hospitality industry should devise a policy of marketing communication.