Page 72 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Konstantia Darvidou, Evangelos Siskos: Digital Marketing Tools in the EU Tourism Sector

Correlation analysis shows that additional increase in already widely used digital tools
is less efficient for stimulating inbound tourism in the EU countries. The correlations
between the shares of enterprises at the beginning of the analysed period (2015 or 2016)
on one hand and the correlations between the factors and tourism exports growth
(correlations taken from the table 3) on another hand are significant negative ones: -
0.31 (for TE) and -0.54 (for TEGDP). For example, almost all the companies in
accommodation sector (96%) already had a website and the correlations with their use
were close to zero (0.07 and -0.06). The correlations for travel agencies were even
negative (-0.62 and 0.58) for the website tool (but such a strange affect could be also a
result of strong correlation between Tweb and Tsmopin: -0.74). So, there can be a
saturation point in use of this instrument in recent years, where minor additional changes
in their use provide no significant positive effect or it is difficult to measure it under the
influence of various other factors of inbound tourism. The only substantial positive
effect for travel agencies was in case of using website with personalised content for
regular/recurrent visitors. Investing in developing websites could be an innovative tool
in the past, but nowadays applying new digital tools can be more efficient.

Table 3: Correlation matrix of digital marketing tools and tourism exports growth.
Travel agency, tour operator
and other reservation service
Sector Accomodation Sector and related activities
Factor TE TEGDP Factor TE TEGDP
Aweb 0.07 -0.06 Tweb -0.62** -0.58**
Awebdescr -0.03 -0.28 Twebdescr -0.22 -0.63**
Awevorder 0.13 0.05 Twevorder -0.03 -0.19
Awebtrack -0.04 0.04 Twebtrack 0.25 0.31
Awebcustom -0.01 -0.05 Twebcustom 0.19 -0.05
Awebperson -0.05 0.23 Twebperson 0.45** 0.15
Aadv 0.32 0.52** Tadv -0.20 0.00
Aadvcont 0.23 0.48* Tadvcont -0.36 -0.19
Aadvpast 0.32 0.60** Tadvpast -0.05 -0.27
Aadvgeo 0.21 0.41 Tadvgeo -0.14 -0.20
Aadvoth 0.52** 0.37 Tadvoth 0.04 -0.01
Aadvtarg 0.30 0.58** Tadvtarg -0.29 -0.09
Asmimage 0.13 -0.30 Tsmimage 0.12 -0.31
Asmresp 0.05 -0.21 Tsmresp 0.20 -0.32
Asminnov 0.10 0.06 Tsminnov 0.20 0.15
Asmopin -0.28 0.01 Tsmopin 0.72** 0.54**
Asmcust -0.10 -0.31 Tsmcust 0.10 -0.33
Asnetw -0.12 -0.13 Tsnetw 0.02 -0.29
Ablog 0.13 0.21 Tblog 0.52** 0.39

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