The Presence of Rural Accommodation in Extremadura on Facebook: An Approach to Its Intensity of Use Through a Grouping Analysis
Facebook has acquired a notable presence in many business activities as a social medium and networking service. Tourism has not been oblivious to this trend and consequently numerous accommodation establishments have joined this network. However, when analysing a particular type of accommodation, i.e. rural accommodation, certain deficiencies can be observed at least in the context analysed. For this reason, this article aims to ascertain the activity of rural accommodation in Extremadura based on the hypothesis that the potential of this network to promote the visibility of its establishments is not always exploited. At the same time we investigate the possible existence of a territorial pattern in certain characteristics of the social network that could lead to an improvement in the visibility of the accommodation establishments. To corroborate this assumption, a Grouping Analysis is applied both with and without spatial restriction in order to determine the presence of spatial clusters. The results clearly show that a higher performance is achieved when this technique is applied based on spatial relationships than without them. At the same time, it can be observed that most of the rural accommodation establishments do not stand out in the use of the social network analysed and very few of them play a prominent role, both positively and negatively, with respect to the average situation of the accommodation establishments. In the first case, they should act as models when their behaviour can be replicated by other establishments, and in the second case they should serve as a basis for the implementation of corrective measures to involve the establishments in the management and control of this widely distributed social network. Among the conclusions drawn from this study is the need to actively incorporate Facebook as a basic tool for the positioning of accommodation.