محمد رحیمی خوش

Social media has become a vital communication channel in various industries, including tourism and hospitality. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media—specifically user-generated content—on the occupancy rates of 5-star hotels in Mashhad, Iran. The research follows a three-stage methodology. First, customer reviews from Instagram fan pages of selected hotels were collected using the Graph API Explorer and analyzed through sentiment analysis to classify them into positive, negative, or neutral categories. Second, hotel occupancy was estimated using the number of weekly check-ins on Instagram as a proxy due to restricted access to official occupancy data. Finally, regression analysis was applied to examine the relationship between the percentage of positive reviews and the number of check-ins. The results reveal a strong positive correlation between favorable customer comments and hotel check-ins for most of the studied hotels, suggesting that social media plays a critical role in influencing consumer decision-making and hotel occupancy. The findings emphasize the strategic importance of leveraging social media platforms for effective marketing and customer engagement in the hospitality industry.