Lebanon’s area is ranked 170th in the world (CIA, 2014). It really is smaller compared to the size of Connecticut, one of the smallest states in in America. Moreover, Lebanon is among the few democratic countries in the centre East region. Regarding its economy, Lebanon is really a free market economy and contains an extremely long tradition of laissez-faire economics. Along with its coastal location on the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Lebanon is recognized as the central ‘window’ of the Middle East to Europe, North Africa, and all of those other world. For this reason, its economy has gone through some very prosperous times and was even once called the ‘Paris’ of the Middle East prior to the nation’s 15 year-long bloody civil war which ended in 1990.
Also, although Lebanon is tiny, additionally it is just about the most diverse nations in the world. Christians, Muslims, Druze, and other minority sects are spread all over the small nation and even Lebanon’s political system is based on sectarian power sharing.
However, this diversity had played a pivotal role in the country’s problems. This diversity was a necessary condition of the country’s sectarian civil war and currently plays an important role in its political paralysis, although other factors (mainly foreign) are to blame as well. There’s currently no acting President and the country’s rival political parties keep bickering and preventing rather than facilitating the country’s development.
Furthermore, Lebanon’s proximity to Israel has managed to get a foreign policy/proxy battleground for foreign nations, each using Lebanon for its own selfish ends.
The sad political realities of the country have significantly hurt the country’s economy. Also, since Lebanon is a service-based economy, this specific sector has taken the biggest hit.
Tourism plays a significant role in the nation’s economy. Based on the Lebanese Ministry of Economy & Trade (MOET), “Tourism is definitely one of Lebanon’s leading economic sectors” (Economic Research Unit, 2010).
Furthermore, The World Travel & Tourism Council estimated that the travel & tourism sector in Lebanon contributed over $4 billion dollars in 2013 (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2014).
The travel & tourism sector composed about 10% of the economy in 2012 but that share dropped to 9% in 2013 (ibid, p. 14). That is due to the political situation in the country as well as some other factors. Moreover, the amount of tourist arrivals in the united kingdom kept decreasing from 2011 to 2013.
Since the tourism industry has been somewhat floundering before few years, the area for error becomes really small for businesses in this industry. The political & economic situations are squeezing tourist-related (TR) businesses in Lebanon. This means that these businesses are forced to accomplish more to make up for increasing losses (or decreasing profits) and with fewer resources. There is no telling once the political & economic situation in Lebanon will improve especially because the civil war in neighboring Syria shows no signs of abating.
There are many ways that Lebanese TR businesses can adapt of these times such as for example implementing downsizing policies and reducing on marketing & advertising budgets. When economic recessions and a down economy affect businesses, the first what to get eliminated are often marketing budgets. But especially since TR businesses should do more marketing to make up for lost businesses, this may not be a good idea.
One solution to this problem is to take advantage of Social Media Marketing strategies since they cost little to no resources, perfect for the current economic situation in Lebanon. Social media marketing allows TR businesses to overcome obstacles of limited budgets and decreased business.
Problem Statement
During the past couple of years, the positive effect of social media marketing on business has been extremely high (Kaplan et al., 2010; Stelzner, 2010; Treem & Leonardi, 2012, p. 143; Baker & Green, 2014).
Moreover, Facebook and Twitter fans of a specific brand are much more likely to recommend and purchase from these brands than non-fans (Cruz & Mendelsohn, 2011). But, we don’t need to make certain of social media’s impact on business through clinical tests. For Social Media Management agency , which include over 30% of the world, this fact is known. More and more businesses are inserting Social media tools into their marketing strategies and, sometimes, have even become a fundamental element of their overall business strategy.
Naturally, you might expect that Lebanese businesses would quickly adopt SOCIAL MEDIA as a key role within their overall marketing strategies but this is not the case. With regards to the center East and especially Lebanon, the region is far behind the West in social media usage. Not only that, in terms of businesses mixed up in tourism industry, there is much room for growth. Little investment in technology is keeping tourist businesses away from maximizing marketing opportunities distributed by social media.
The Lebanese tourism industry is not taking advantage of social media tactics even though the benefits of doing this are apparent. This presents an excellent problem especially because the economy is going by way of a very rough time.
Moreover, Lebanese TR businesses and businesses in Lebanon generally are not adopting social media marketing tools because they should. This presents an enormous problem in the waste of resources together with significant missed opportunities as a larger target audience could be reached via social media enabling businesses that adopt social media tools gain a better potential for success and prosperity