Comparative Analysis: Twitter Pages of Singapore & Dubai Tourism

Singapore and Dubai are two of the “top 10” tourist designations, across the globej. Singapore was 4^th most visited city in the world while Dubai was 7^th, in 2010. (enjoyourholidya.com, 2011)  With such a statistics, stating that they are not tourism hubs par excellence will be an understatement. Dubai is world famous for “an arsenal of spellbinding real estate constructions”; while Singapore’s strength lies in its, cosmopolitan culture and status as a world class business hub.

Notwithstanding the geographical and cultural imparity, they share lot of similarities across various cultural, social & economical parameters. One of them is- they have visionary leaderships which emphasize on robust marketing of their respective states. Both Singapore & Dubai are among the most well marketed destinations, across the globe. 

   

 Twitter: an effective destination marketing tool

The advertisement & brand building across various industry verticals is being transformed, with digital / social media encroaching vigorously onto the space, so far dominated by traditional media. (Print, Outdoors, TV, Radio etc). The tourism industry has also not escaped from this new digital revolution lead by Social Media. These days Social Media plays a crucial role in various areas related to tourism, one of them being branding in the form of- showcase information, handle queries, contain negative perception etc. All the Social Medias, Facebook, Blogs, You Tube, Twitter etc play a pivotal role towards constructing the Brand Identity of a tourist destination.

One such platform is Twitter. As much 2011, it has 200 million users, with 100 million active & 50 million daily users (jeffbullas.com, 2011). It is this sheer number of users that makes this micro-blogging site a great digital marketing platform for tourist destinations. The following blog post will do a comparative analysis of Twitter account of two of the leading tourist destination- I Love Dubai (Dubai) & YourSingapore (Singapore). The tool used will be Tweet Stats & Klout.

Twitter statistics analysis

Fig 2: shows no. of Tweets for I love Dubai & YourSingapore over the period of last 19 months. Source: Tweet Stats

 Table 1: Compares the two pages across various twitter engagement parameters. Source: Tweet Stats

                 Fig 2: shows the aggregate daily tweets for both the pages. Source: tweet stats

                   Fig 3: shows the aggregate hourly tweets for both the pages. Source: Tweet Stats

Klout Score: measure of twitter account influence

Every social media channel has its influence. The social media platforms exercise its influence by motivating target audience to Retweet, Share, Like, Comment etc. The more the target audience engages in such activities, the more is the likelihood of influence. Klout is an analytical tool that helps, estimating the degree of influence for various social media platforms. It will be used in the given analysis, to compare the influence of the both the Twitter pages.

Table 2: compares the Klout scores, no. of people & topic influenced; for both the pages. Klout Score: measures the ability to drive action with the help of retweet and replies.

  Analysis

·         Over all “YourSingapore” has a much better “Twitter Presence”, marked by a very high number of tweets in comparison with “I Love Dubai”.

·         “YourSingapore” also receives a much higher engagement from the audience. This is reflected with the high percentages of Retweet & Responses.  

·         Notwithstanding, the zoom in mid 2010; the number of tweets has gradually dwindled henceforth for “YourSingapore”.

·         In the past few months, both the pages have similar “Twitter Presence”. In fact it’s slightly favored towards the “I Love Dubai” page.

·         When it comes to the “Klout Parameters”, there is high parity across the two pages.

Reference

1>     Enjoyourholiday.com, 2011, available at <http://www.enjoyourholiday.com/2011/04/18/top-10-most-visited-cities-in-the-world / >

2>     Jeffbullas.com, 2011, 11 new Twitter facts, available at http://goo.gl/FEsAo >

Analysis of E-Commerce in Middle East and North Africa - Part 2

The last article dealt with the fundamentals of e-commerce activities in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA). The given article is next in the series, which will primarily deal with the degree of e-commerce activities across various demographic profiles in the MENA region. The segments, where the average percentage of e-commerce activities is more than 5, will be considered as key segment.      

Table 1: shows the percentage of online purchase among the population (includes internet users as well as non users) for the region as well as individual economies across various age groups. Source: Insights MENA

Table 2: shows the percentage of online purchase among the MEN population (includes internet users as well as non users) for the region as well as individual economies, across various age groups. Source: Insights MENA

Table 3: shows the percentage of online purchase among the Women population (includes internet users as well as non users) for the region as well as individual economies, across various age groups. Source: Insights MENA

Key  Insights

Most of the key market segments are concentrated in UAE & Saudi Arabia. It is somehow even higher in UAE, which not only benefits from high, per capita GDP & internet penetration but also cosmopolitan culture. (UAE houses people from 206 nationalities) Some of the key points pertaining to the e-commerce behavior for various demographic segments in the MENA region, are as follows-

·         Key market segments (irrespective of gender): UAE (all the age group), Saudi Arabia (25-34, 35-44)

·         Key market segments (men): UAE (all the age group), Saudi Arabia (25-34, 35-44), Jordan (25-34)

·         Key market segments (women): UAE (15-24, 25-34, 35-44), Saudi Arabia (25-34)

·         Jordan’s women segment’s spectacularly off the mark performance: Jordan is one of the Middle Eastern countries, which has run a decent show, when it comes to digital media. It’s “MEN” segment has been quite active in terms of e-commerce activities. But the same does not hold true for “WOMEN” segment. The “WOMEN” segment’s performance has been spectacularly off the mark with almost zero e-commerce activities across all the age group.

·         Morocco (15-24) & Saudi Arabia (25-34) women segment outperforms their male counterparts:  In the MENA region, where the women still needs some time to catch up with their male counterparts, it is very unlikely that they can outperform them in terms of e-commerce activities. Yet, there are couples of section where the “WOMEN” have outperformed their “MEN” counterparts- Morocco (15-24) and Saudi Arabia (25-34), where in terms of % of average e-commerce activities; they have outperformed their male counterparts. This diversion from the general trend is indicative of slow but certain change in the gender dynamics in the region.  

·         Abysmally low e-commerce penetration in the 45+ segment: All across the MENA, excluding UAE, the 45 + segments appears to be dysfunctional in terms of e-commerce activities.