African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Volume 5 (2) - (2016) ISSN: 2223-814X Copyright: © 2016 AJHTL - Open Access- Online @ http//: www.ajhtl.com 1 Examining social media marketing performance: A focus on travel agencies and tour operators in South Africa Dr. Rosemary Matikiti* University of Johannesburg PO Box 524, Auckland Park, 2006, South Africa. Telephone: +27 11 559 7201. Email: matikiti@gmail.com Prof. Mornay Roberts-Lombard University of Johannesburg, South Africa. and Prof. Mercy Mpinganjira University of Johannesburg, South Africa. *Corresponding author Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate South African travel agencies and tour operators’ social media marketing performance using the Digital Marketing Framework (DMF). Data used in the analysis was collected from 150 small travel agencies and tour operators using a structured questionnaire. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics and factor scores. The results revealed that travel agencies and tour operators are performing well in the first stage of the framework, which is to attract customers to their social media site. The performance of the travel agencies and tour operators in the second stage (engage customers), third stage (retain customers) and fifth stage (relate back to customers) was relatively poor. The performance of the companies in the fourth stage (learn about customers) was very poor as very few companies performed the marketing activities associated with these stages. Lack of time to sustain social media marketing activities and a lack of skills in using social media for marketing were identified as the major challenges faced by travel agencies and tour operators. This study contributes to a better understanding of the performance of small tourism businesses and their challenges in using social media marketing. Managers can use the findings in this study to develop their social media marketing strategies and/or assess their company performance. Keywords: social media marketing, travel agency, tour operators, social media sites Introduction The advent of internet technologies has brought about changes in the behaviour of consumers online and revolutionized the tourism industry (Buhalis & Law, 2008). In the past, websites were designed only for businesses to publish content and for visitors to view that content (Chan & Guillet, 2011). However, in this Web 2.0 era, websites are now dynamic and interactive, especially social media sites, and users actively participate in the generation and enrichment of content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010:60). Due to these changes in user behaviour, companies across the globe are now compelled to use this new tool, social media, to facilitate a two-way communication with their customers (Lim, 2010). “Today, it is no longer enough to solely rely on traditional media for marketing, nor is it acceptable for the companies to simply move the offline sales materials to online” (Chan & Guillet, 2011:345). Companies need to explore how social media websites can be used for marketing and include them in their marketing mix. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) have defined social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content”. Generally social media activities are centred on the gathering and sharing of information online through messages pictures, videos and audio (Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014). The growth of social media sites has been exponential over the past decade (Chaffey, 2016). From January 2015 to January 2016 social