Adv.Sci. Lett.

23, 8728-8731, 2017 RESEARCH ARTICLE

Copyright © 2017 American Scientific Publishers Advanced Science Letters
All rights reserved Vol. 23, 8728-8731, 2017
Printed in United States of America

ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN PROMOTING

EDUCATION TOURISM
Asmara Irfan a, Amran Rasli b, Abdul Sami c, Hira Liaquat d
a,b,c Department of Management, University Teknologi Malaysia , skudai Malaysia.
d Lecturer at Virtual University of Pakistan.

Tourism is an important source of revenue for any country and media plays an important role to
promote tourism in different ways, like information search, decision-making behaviors and in
focusing on best practices for interacting with consumers. Educational tourism is one of the fastest
growing areas of the travel and tourism and is frequently unnoticed by tourism professionals and
marketers. In past educational institutes were rely on traditional information sources like print
media, broadcast media, education fairs and university websites to promote their universities and
students also took help from these sources to select their courses and university. The advent of
social media brings a drastic change in marketing strategies. This study reviews the existing
literature to find out the impact of social media to promote education tourism. Social media is
computer-mediated technologies that allow individuals, companies, NGOs, governments, and other
organizations to view, create and share information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of
expression via virtual communities and networks. Literature reveals that social media plays an
important role to promote educational tourism which ultimately improves and promotes the
economic, social, political and cultural life of the nation. By hosting international students it will
increase tourism related projects and will raise investment and using this investment in
infrastructure and for the improvement of quality of education and research work. In recent years
with the rising importance of social media, many higher educational institutions are using social
media tools for the promotion purposes. This paper suggests that the higher education institutes,
education ministry and tourism department should aggressively use social media to promote
education tourism for economic development of the country.

Keywords: Social media, Education tourism, Economic development.

1. INTRODUCTION
Now a day, the most powerful online networking tool is social
media. Social media has been entered into the social and
economic life of people. Technological advancements forced
learners to contribute as a co-producer of knowledge by
introducing the term social media which indicates websites and
online applications that allow users to take benefit from
different features of social media such as communicating,
sharing, collaborating, publishing etc. 1
The use of social media for personal, professional and business
purposes is rising quickly. People are using social web to share
their knowledge about products, brands and services which
shows more real picture of their research experience. All of
these efforts made social media as a “game changer” which has
changed the face of business, marketing and communications. 2
Social media is becoming popular day by day and it can be
used as third party influence technique in marketing, for
example international universities make use of social media as
a marketing tool to attract international students. If social
media contents are highly structured they can correctly specify
the positive and negative impressions of the study destination
from students. 3,4,5,6 Social media has been deeply engaged in
the tourism industry. One industry consultant’s report put for-
*manalsami85@gmail.com
-ward that “social media and tourism have forever gone
together like peanut butter and jelly”. 2
Educational tourism is a travel, during which tourists combine
leisure and learning: attend classes, guided tours to expand
horizons, satisfy curiosity and achieve other learning goals.7
Many scholars argued that whether international education
should be considered in tourism activities or not. Majority of
them are in the favor of putting international education in
tourism because of two reasons: one is like tourism,
international education involves change of location and going
outside your country and second like all other tourism,
education tourism involves limited stay outside your home
location. According to world tourism organization the duration
is not more than a year and less than a day. Although scholars
insisted that student‘s visa are renewed yearly which made
them an annual visitor to the destination .8
Higher education (HE) has become an increasingly competitive
sector of the economy. Many countries are now involved in
international student recruitment. In order to better understand
the factors that influence the international student’s decision on
study destination, international competition among countries
increases. This is especially true for higher education
institutions in countries including Sweden that only recently
have begun to engage in attracting international students.9

8728 Adv.Sci. Lett. 23, 8728-8731, 2017 1936-6012-/2017/23 doi: 10.1166/asl.2017.9959

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Developed countries especially the English speaking countries
are gaining economic and social benefits from international
education and it is becoming a profitable project for them.
These development efforts encouraged developing countries to
raise their educational standard in order to become an
international host destination for international students. 10
As more students are now wishing to study abroad especially
from world’s best destination in order to get more knowledge
and technical competencies, it has resulted in increase in
education tourism. However, little research has been done on
educational tourism and there are many areas that require
empirical proof to make links between education and tourism.
11
This study explores how social media content influences study
destination attractiveness for the students in decision-making
stage and how universities make use of social media for the
promotion of their courses and university and the economic
gains attached with social media and education tourism.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1.SOCIAL MEDIA
The term “social media” is widely used now a day. It was first
used in 2004 when linkedln created its social media online
networking application. Social media has changed the way to
communicate with people. B&C defined the social media
application as “an online technology tool to allow people to
communicate easily, utilizing the internet to share and discuss
information”.12
There are many forms of social media like: blogs, microblogs
(Twitter), social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), mediasharing
sites(YouTube, Flicker), social bookmarking and voting sites
(Digg, Reddit), review sites (Yelp), forums, virtual worlds
(Second Life). 13
Social media have gained so much attention in recent years
that it has opened new opportunities for both the private lives
of individuals and for business. Social media has globally
modernized the personal and organizational interactions
through its different social media platforms. This shows the
power of social media which cannot be underestimated and
expected to continue. No one can imagine such social
interaction in the past. Social media has challenged the
traditional methods of business operations by giving new sets
of business models. 14
Due to social media marketers formulate their strategies
through online customer reviews. Social media includes a wide
range of tools and technologies that allow people to read,
extract, and generate universal text, image, audio, and video
content . There are different types of social media with
different purposes and applications. The term social media is
commonly used interchangeably with social computing, social
networking, Web 2.0, and virtual social world.
“Social media are the tools that facilitate the socialization of
content. social media services encourage collaboration,
interaction, and communication through discussion, feedback,
voting, comments, and sharing of information from all
interested parties”. 14
The above definitions can divide the term social media into two
parts term “social” and “media.” The “social” part refers to the
activities carried out among people, whereas “media” refers to
the internet-enabled tools and technologies used to carry out
such activities. 14
Social media have numerous applications. Different researches
shows that social media is used in three sectors of the economy
i.e. public sector, which includes the government and NGOs,
the education sector and the commercial sector. In marketing
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Adv.Sci. Lett. 23, 8728-8731, 2017
social media is used for customer relationship management
(CRM), knowledge sharing, collaborative activities,
organizational communications, education and training, and so
on .14
Social media is considered to be the new tool for marketing
promotional mix. From different studies on marketing it shows
that social media marketing has received increasing attention
from the academia and from various industries. Social media
can also be adopted to support the development of educational
instructions and facilities. social media tools also facilitated
professional development among researchers .14
Social media is playing an important role in marketing and
promotion. Social media is changing the way of
communication. International education institutions are using
social media for the promotion of their higher education and
communicating with international students. Social media is
providing a major influence on all aspects of international
student’s behavior, including destination awareness,
information searching about course selection. 11, 15
Social media is about people and relationships. To expertly
engage and create conversations online, it’s essential to
understand the audience. In social media, educational
institutions are not communicating to the masses, as with
traditional marketing, but having a conversation with
individual students. 2
Social media is an important tool for economic development
because its tools provide timely, engaging, interactive, targeted
and low-cost ways to market a community, gain information,
and communicate and build relationships with customers. 2
However, very little research has been carried out to provide
guidance on how to use social media for marketing
international education and how international students make
use of social media for study destination.14, 15, 16
2.2. EDUCATION TOURISM
The literature on education tourism is confused and scattered
because little research has been done on this topic. 17, 18
Similarly, Jason, Ahmad, and Azhar added that educational
tourism has been discussed by very few tourism academicians
and this shows the lack of research and data in this area.19
According to Paul due to lack of research there is limited
understanding of educational tourism constructs.20
The significance of decision making is everywhere and very
much popular in management and businesses; this phenomenon
has led to the development of consumer behavior theory. 21
Decision making process is also involved in education so we
can apply consumer behavior theory to education.22 This theory
uses socio-psychological principles of learning and
expectations. The student chooses the best alternative among
the given choices and the primary determinant of student is its
permanent income. However , along with certain number of
benefits, there is also high level of uncertainty attached with
education tourism .Felix and Moogan et al. found that it is
difficult to maintain objectivity while deciding about the
intended course of study and which university to apply to. 21, 22
Countries are trying to generate more and more funds in
education for the purpose of tourism. Education tourism
describes the event in which people travel across international
borders to acquire academic services. In today’s globalized
world, our life is becoming more and more competitive; people
are looking for something new. The access and offer of
educational services increases and novelty of knowledge
sharing methods gains essential meaning. Most of the
institutions offer their courses in English language in order to
increase their market share. Providing educational programs in
Adv.Sci. Lett. 23, 8728-8731, 2017
English on one side will provide more students and on other
hand will increase the competition among universities. 23
World’s top educational destinations are found in US, UK and
Australia etc. because these countries are highly competitive
and wealthy which shows that educational tourism is related to
the wealth of host country. For this reason many international
students’ wishes to study in these countries.23 Thus many
institutions found it difficult to promote themselves in the
market place. Therefore it is not only the duty of the
educational institutions to raise their educational standard but
also the government should take keen interest in marketing
their institutions to make them best educational destination
The demand for the international education depends on the per
capita income of the home country, educational opportunities
at home country, benefits of studying abroad and tuition fees.
A research was conducted by McMahon in which he
determines the flow of international students from developing
countries to developed countries. Results shows the positive
correlation between the size of the host nation economy and
that of the home nation economy .He found a negative
correlation between studying abroad and prosperity, lamenting
that higher levels of education lead to prosperity. In his views
the push factor was basically the level of economic wealth,
global political involvement of the home country and available
education opportunities. 24
Many students studying abroad are influenced by economic,
political and host country capacity and these factors are further
influenced by media and friends. The pull factors from the host
country include attractive infrastructures or resources available
in the host country e.g. easy application, international
recognition in terms of higher education and a safe
environment, whereas the pull factors from the institution
perspective include course availability, teaching expertise,
accommodation cost and availability.21 In addition Jason stated
that edu-tourist motivations are widely influenced by the
commonality of language, historical links between the home
and host nations and the accessibility of science and
technology-based programs tend to influence the students'
decision in selecting a host country for edu-tourism.19
There is a lack of understanding about the concept of
educational tourism, that’s why edu-tourism sector is one of the
unnoted sub-sectors of the tourism market. 25 There is a need of
further research in order to fill the gap and to provide the
framework on this phenomenon. Joyce observed that research
has investigated some areas of the economic and
developmental effects of edu-tourism; a systematic model is
required to know how these elements interact with each other.26
An important principle of marketing is that all marketing
activities should be consumer oriented in order to satisfy
consumer demand. The innovation and improvement of
technology put a positive impact on educational marketing.
Globalization and internationalization are changing the way
education marketers compete and meet the needs of a global
economy . Australian institutions are now using modern
technologies for their educational promotion, they use internet
for their international marketing strategies to attract
international students. 9
2.3. ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN PROMOTING
EDUCATION TOURISM
Today, students are considered as people of digital world as
they are so much involved in computers and online virtual
world .Recently, the invention of social media, for instance
Facebook and Twitter, provides education marketers another
channel to market and communicate with prospective students
as use of social media provides education marketers to interact
RESEARCH ARTICLE
with the students any time and with lower cost. Social media
supports educational learning in higher education. 27, 28
Although majority of the students are social media users but
social media is less frequently used for academic purposes. 9
The internationalization of higher education is not a new
concept; however, it’s not easy to achieve the goals of
comprehensive internationalization with low budget and
increased competition. Social media offers at least four unique
advantages on the dimensions of relevance, speed, cost and
personalization, which makes it highly relevant to resource
efficiency in the context of international higher education. 29
Students are the center of activity for higher education
institutions, and effective communication with potential
students will certainly contribute to resource efficiency. Social
media provides faster communication across the world which
gives an opportunity for admissions officers and current
students to promptly provide the information, which in turn
may positively influence students’ perceptions. Student will be
satisfied with their choice of university if all the information is
provided with regards to the university attributes. 29
Traditional methods of education promotion involve education
fairs which costs very high and provides limited opportunity to
communicate with the students at the initial meetings at fairs.
With the arrival of social media educational institutions saves
direct costs such as travel and registration but also indirect cost
such as the unavailability of admissions personnel in the office.
Social media offers a unique opportunity to customize
messages and engagements with students’ needs and language
preferences. Although social media platforms like Facebook
and LinkedIn are globally popular. 29
With low budget and increased competition some universities
uses mediators like commissioned agents but social media
offers more credible and cost-effective connectivity with
prospective students. Through social media not only the
communication with the students is becoming easy but also
universities shares online videos on social media so that
students can understand campus life more accurately. These
tools will help students who cannot make a decision without
visit a campus. many institutions lose touch with international
students once they graduated but social media provides an
opportunity to find and reconnect with these international
students. 29
Today branding and marketing of Higher education indicate the
success of HEIs. In order to convince the students by “what
they see is what they get”, many HEIs are making efforts to
present a clear image of offering a brand. Marketing plays an
important role in attracting more international students and as
an investment in the future. Promotion is one of the marketing
method, includes all of the available tools to the marketer for
'marketing communication'. Promotion can be in mass media
like TV, radio, newspapers, internet, and mobile phones. 7
Social media tools are making it possible to communicate
directly with almost any audience .Many universities have
successfully taking advantages of social media as a
promotional tool. One of these example is Harvard University,
the place where Facebook originally started out and the oldest
institution of higher learning in the United States and the first
corporation chartered in the country. They are using the
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Blogs as a part of their social
media strategy to develop interaction with their target
audiences.
Social media users have realized the potential power and
implications for using social media in education marketing.
Reaching the students worldwide is not difficult now , it can be
done with a click of a mouse. 7
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3. CONCLUSION
This paper provides a better understanding of how social media
can be used as a promotional tool by higher education. In order
to promote educational tourism in host countries we should
consider the benefits of using the social media networks for
promotional purposes. Social media is different from
traditional marketing channels; social media is about sharing
opinions, exchanging information, and having conversations.
When resources for economic development are limited and the
expectations for results are high social media can provide
timely, engaging, interactive, targeted and low-cost ways to
market a community. Social media provides a bridge between
international students and HEIs to communicate with each
other.
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Received: 15 December 2016. Accepted: 12 May-2017