Harnessing Social Media for Promoting Tourism in Africa: An Exploratory Analysis of Tweets Page: 1

                                
Harnessing Social Media for Promoting Tourism in Africa: An Exploratory Analysis
of Tweets
Daniel Gelaw Alemneh1, Shimelis Assefa2' and Abebe Rorissa3
1University of North Texas
2University of Denver
3University at Albany
Abstract
Tourism has the potential to be the engine of a country's economic development. Some developing
countries, especially those in Africa, rely on tourism for their citizens' employment. Consequently, the
rise and fall of their unemployment rates are closely associated with that of tourist numbers. Hence, they
need to constantly find ways to promote their cultural heritage in order to attract more tourists. Some of
the key promotion tools are social media such as Twitter and an investigation to understand the nature
of tweets about cultural heritage institutions is an important undertaking. However, investigations into the
nature of tweets about African cultural heritage are non-existent. Our research aims to shed some light
on the broad characteristics of tweets about African cultural heritage. We also identify possible
implications and suggest potential strategies for tourism stakeholders in their use of Social Media in
general and Twitter in particular.
Keywords: tourism; social media; Twitter; Africa; cultural heritage
Citation:
Copyright: Copyright is held by the authors.
Contact: Daniel.Alemneh@unt.edu
1 Introduction
Tourism has proven to be one of the economic engines in places such as Africa. Globally, tourism is
estimated to account for over 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) (United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development, 2010). In order to attract more tourists, African countries are constantly looking for ways
to promote their cultural heritage sites and institutions. Recently, social media tools such as Twitter have
opened new avenues for countries to conduct marketing campaigns.
Often, tourists themselves are the ones who generate some of the publicity because they are likely to
share their experiences after visiting a country and/or cultural heritage. However, the nature and types of
tweets by tourists or visitors about their experiences with and opinions of a country's cultural heritage could
have implications for the country's future reputation, not to mention its ability to attract more visitors. In the
African context, investigations into the nature of cultural heritage institutions as well as tweets about the
institutions are lacking. Therefore, our work attempts to:
" identify the source and location of tweets about African cultural heritage
" characterize visitors who tweet about African cultural heritage and their information flow network
" identify sentiments, trending topics and popular subjects discussed with respect to African cultural
heritage
Based on our findings, we identify possible implications and suggest potential strategies for tourism
administrators and other stakeholders in their use of Social Media in general and Twitter in particular.
2 Overview of Tourism and Destinations in Africa
Countries around the world have benefited from tourism as international global arrivals have grown. From
1980 to 2000, arrivals in the Asia Pacific region grew from 8% to 22% contributing to economic growth and
improved livelihoods. During the same period, Africa's market share for global tourism grew from 3% (1980)
to 5% (2010). According to the World Bank report, the number of tourists arriving in Sub Saharan Africa
has grown over 300% since 1990, with 2012 marking a high of 33.8 million tourists. Income generated from
tourism has also climbed: Receipts from hotels, tours and other attractions in 2012 amounted to over US$36
billion and directly contributed over 2.8% to the region's GDP (World Bank, 2013).