Understanding the Acceptance of Digital Marketing Among Tour Operators: An Empirical Study

Abstract

A lot of lessons are learned post COVID-19 pandemic, including in the tourism business. Prior to the pandemic, tour operators had difficulties in competing with online travel agents (OTA) in terms of product sales and marketing. This article aims to understand the perception of digital marketing usage among tour operators and explore the factors influencing the adoption or rejection to it by using an integrated framework model which was grounded on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). The factors identified which effect the usage of digital marketing technology were perceived ease of use, personal innovativeness, and facilitating condition, toward use behaviour. These factors were moderated by behaviour intention. The model was tested with 77 tour operator companies that are members of a travel agency association in Indonesia using PLS- SEM. The results show that tour operators’ facilitating condition and behaviour intention influence use behaviour directly. On the other hand, perceive ease of use, personal innovativeness, and facilitating condition directly influence behaviour intention. Personal innovativeness influences use behaviour mediated by behaviour intention. This study contributes to the understanding of tour operators where they need to focus on improving the ease of use and encouraging a positive intention among users.

Keywords

• technology acceptance
• tour operators
• digital marketing
• utaut