Is Agrotourism Popular on the Internet?

Abstract

There is growing literature on the importance of the Internet, such as the growing importance of the agri/agrotourism role in the tourism industry, but with little inspection of the relationship in the context of word of mouth. The assumption is that online word of mouth makes the understanding of agrotourism more popular, so the aim of this paper is to examine whether the "popularity" of agrotourism has grown on the Internet during past years during which the Internet has recorded exceptional growth. According to that, this paper examines the distributions of using similar keywords with the same meaning -agritourism and agrotourism -during last four years (from June 2007 to June 2011) by use of Google alert and the word agroturizam which is the translation of these words in the Croatian language. Google alert was used as a monitoring tool. The paper analyzes the appearances of these three keywords monthly and daily on Google and additionally analyzes their use on Facebook as the most popular social group nowadays.Keywords: agritourism, agrotourism, agroturizam, Internet, word of mouth, Croatia PRODUŽENI SAŽETAK U znanstvenoj literaturi postoji sve više istraživanja koja govore o sve većem utjecaju interneta u oglašavanju i prodaji. Agroturizam ima sve značajniju ulogu u globalnoj turističkoj "industriji", ali do sada ima relativno malo istraživanja, ili ih uopće nema, a koja su istražila utjecaj marketinga "od usta do usta" ili "word of mouth marketing" u slučaju agroturizma. Istraživanje prezentirano u radu pretpostavilo je da online marketing "od usta do usta" čini agroturizam sve popularnijim i cilj rada je bio istražiti, je li popularnost agroturizma značajnije porasla s obzirom na iznimnu popularnost i sve veću dostupnost interneta. Sukladno tome, u radu je dan prikaz pojavljivanja riječi agrotourism i agritourism u posljednje četiri godine, od lipnja 2007. do lipnja 2011. godine, te riječi agroturizam od ožujka 2009. do lipnja 2011. na Google upozorenju. Google je pri tome korišten kao alat za monitoring budući je to najviše korištena ili među najčešće korištenim svjetskim tražilicama. U radu je dan prikaz pojavljivanja ove tri riječi u okviru ukupnog mjesečnog pojavljivanja i prema broju pojavljivanja u danu. Dodatno je analizirano i pojavljivanje ovih riječi na Facebook-u, kao trenutno najpopularnijoj društvenoj mreži. U radu je također dan pregled literature i istraživanja veznih uz razvoj interneta kao marketinškog instrumenta, definiranja pojma agroturizma kao poslovne aktivnosti u ruralnim područjima, promocije kao marketinškog alata u agroturizmu, ruralnog turizma i 221 Journal of Central European Agriculture, 2012, 13(2), p.221-235 DOI: 10.5513/JCEA01/13.2.1038 2 agroturizma na internetu, te ulozi online marketinga "od usta do usta" u turističkoj promociji. Zaključak rada je da online marketing "od usta do usta" nije u dovoljnoj mjeri iskorišten u slučaju agroturizma. Smatramo da će uloga online marketinga "od usta do usta" bit sve veća te da će biti značajnija čak i od tradicionalnog mark...

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