1. Introduction
Information communication technology (ICT) has been one of the most researched areas in tourism technology since the 1980s and has become one of the defining technologies of our time [
1]. With the development and application of social media marketing cutting edge strategies in information technologies, tourism organizations can benefit from the numerous opportunities offered by social media to promote their relationship with their customers into a network of marketing innovations [
2]. Social media marketing (SMM) presents amazing opportunities for customers to utilize the diverse platforms available, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the consumer review, blogs and networking sites, among others, to generate online content and share information about cultural tourism product and services [
3,
4]. This is evident in some studies that have demonstrated the importance of social media sites for marketing purposes [
1,
3,
4,
5,
6], but its implications on tourism, especially, sustainability of heritage festivals, has not been exhaustively investigated. Therefore, it is important to understand how social media is used to market tourism destinations [
4,
6], and how consumers behave, socialize, and encourage each other using the new technology [
7] to ensure tourism sustainability [
8,
9,
10] with the related effect on the overall sustainable development [
10,
11]. Tourism destinations need to understand how to improve their social media marketing activities in order to differentiate their products and services from those of other competing tourism destinations [
8,
12]. Many countries regarded social media (SM) as an essential tool for promoting festivals in cultural tourism destination [
13].
Cultural tourism destinations are evolving and boosting the culture and traditions of the people as a means of appealing and improving visitors’ experiences. In recent times, the Nigerian government has made concerted efforts to promote “the Door of Return Festival”, which was previously known as the “Badagry Diaspora Festival”. The festival is a yearly event that is celebrated at Badagry, Lagos, and promoted using social media [
14]. Social media has facilitated and modified communication between the diaspora communities [
14]. The “Door of Return” festival in Nigeria was designed to encourage African-Americans to visit Africa, and particularly Nigeria, in order to celebrate the 400 years since the enslaved Africans who were transported forcefully to Jamestown, Virginia in the United States [
15]. Meanwhile, there is need to ensure its sustainability, which has not been given adequate attention in the literature. So far, no black African nation has made rigorous efforts to offer cultural tourism products to the outside world. Examples of two famous tourist destinations in Africa are: (i) Kenya, which offers safaris; and (ii) Gambia, which markets its warm-water sea beaches. The cultural aspect of tourism is an area that is still untapped with huge potential [
15].
A festival is a symbol of a cultural tourism event that can unite tourists and residents in celebrating positive motivation on their homelands in numerous ways [
16]. Social media has consequently developed as a crucial network for marketing strategies to compliment these festivals [
17], especially with similar heritage festivals like the “Door of Return” festival, thereby changing the way destinations communicate with their potential customers with scarce resources [
18,
19]. Furthermore, tourists believe that information that comes from a personal source is more reliable than money-spinning sources [
20]. Thus, social media is particularly relevant since tourism is an “information-intensive industry” [
18,
19,
20]. Social media has developed as a growing technology that has played a significant role in marketing cultural tourism products in diaspora tourism marketing [
21], stimulating consumers’ intentions in choosing diaspora tourist destinations. Improving their destination satisfaction depends solely on the tourists’ overall satisfaction and their emotional experience is derived through the three dimensions of joy—positivity, surprise, and love [
22,
23].
Destination managing organizations (DMOs), who are the promoters of tourism in Nigeria, are continuously faced with distinct challenges in coping with the ideal strategy to face new realities where destination branding is largely the tourist’s product [
7]. The unsuccessful utilization of social media by practitioners in the tourism and hospitality sectors is simply connected to a lack of practical operational skills [
24]. Fortunately, social media platforms have provided a leading digital communication network [
18,
20], with 67 percent of total internet users using a network [
19]. Therefore, this disruptive digital modification has particularly affected the tourism industry [
13]. It is against this backdrop that this study examined how social media is used as a destination marketing tool to promote the sustainability of the “diaspora festival” in Nigeria. This study is pertinent because the hospitality and the tourism sector is characterized as one of the leading industries being influenced by social media [
21,
24]. Additionally, the novelty of this article, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is that there have been no empirical studies written in this area of study.
To accomplish this objective, this study employed the theory of planned behavior (TPT) and also reviewed literature of social media in the destination marketing context. The contributions of this study are threefold: First, this study contributes significantly to the literature on the sustainability of heritage festival, especially the Badagry Heritage Festival in Nigeria, which has not been previously investigated. The study will no doubt spell out the potential benefits of conserving the historic sites, thereby creating a sense of place and raising awareness regarding the dark periods of history amongst future generations. Secondly, the proposed model provides an insight into consumer responses, providing to valuable information to diaspora festival planners and exhibitors, specifically the Badagry Heritage Festival in Nigeria, so as to design festival products that will ensure the visitors’ satisfaction with the aim of ensuring the festival’s sustainability. Thirdly, the study uncovers the significance of social media as a veritable marketing tool for boosting the heritage festival’s publicity. Lastly, the model developed will serve as a guide for the DMOs to implement an innovative and suitable approach for the application of satisfactory tools and procedure for achieving a sustainable Badagry Heritage Festival in Nigeria. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows:
Section 2 presents the literature review and hypotheses development. The source of data and method for data analysis are presented in
Section 3, while the result findings and interpretations are presented in
Section 4. Finally, the discussion of findings and the implications for DMOs while identifying the limitations of the study and suggestions for further research on the subject matter are presented in
Section 5.
5. Discussion of Findings
Social media (SM) serves as an indispensable means for the promoting the diaspora festival as a cultural tourism destination [
14]. Thus, we examined the relationship between social media and the tourists’ intention to revisit Badagry Diaspora Festival. This study provides empirical insights on how social media is used as a destination marketing tool to promote the Badagry Diaspora Festival in Nigeria.
We used partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to examine the nexus between social media (SM), website quality (WQ), online word of mouth (eWOM) tourists’ festival satisfaction (FS), and festival revisiting intention. The control variables included in the models, age, gender, education background, nationality, and marital status, did not have crucial impacts on the relationships of the variables in the study. The findings revealed that social media (SM), website quality (WQ), and online word of mouth (eWOM) had a positive and significant relationship with online tourists’ festival satisfaction (FS). Moreover, this study found that festival quality had a positive and significant effect on the intention of the tourists to revisit the Badagry Diaspora Festival. Furthermore, we found that festival satisfaction partially mediated the positive relationship between the antecedents of festival satisfaction (SM, FQ, WQ, and eWOM) and festival revisiting intension.
It should be noted also that website quality (WQ) and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) were essentially designed to promote festival satisfaction, which in turn promoted the intention to revisit the Badagry Diaspora Festival. So therefore, the use of the social media sites by the customers creates various marketing innovations, which enables the generation of online content and sharing of information about cultural tourism products and services. The social media marketing provides the platforms for the DMOs (government of Nigeria) to interact with the tourists who can promote the Badagry festival destination. This corroborates the findings of Osei et al., [
3] and Navío-Marco et al. [
4], who found that social media marketing presents opportunities, through numerous networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, for the creation of online content and advertising tourism product and services.
In addition, H3, which measured the relationship between website quality and tourist satisfaction, as well as the influence of electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) on festival satisfaction (H4), were both statistically significant. This implies that the Door of Return Festival planners must recognize how to influence the use of social media marketing as it relates to website quality and eWOM so as to boost the festival quality. The findings are consistent with Lund et al., [
7] who established that the relationship between social media marketing and e-word of mouth are the most powerful determinants of diaspora festival satisfaction. The findings are also in consonance with the conclusions of Dedeoğlu et al., [
66], who reported that the Internet and social media are the two most significant communication networks shaping the festival brand awareness to tourists. DMOs must develop suitable interaction with actual and potential tourists in order to ascertain the niche markets required to promote festival destinations.
Moreover, this study revealed the significant moderating role of cultural motivation in the relationship between festival satisfaction and festival revisiting intention. Hence, a growing body of knowledge recognizes that tourist behavior is influenced by the sociocultural background of tourists [
149]. It is presumed that African-Americans, by virtue of their cultural ties with Africa, may desire to visit the land of their ancestors. The intention to revisit the Badagry festival is boosted by the general interest of the tourist in exploring their culture, history, and the numerous heritage sites found in the Badagry festival destination. The cultural motivation, derivable from the cultural affinity African-Americans have with Africa, enhances the festival satisfaction and propels the intention to revisit the festival destination. This is in line with the submission Liu et al. [
146] and Hernández-Mogollón et al., [
147], who revealed that the success of tourism destination marketing is affected by tourist satisfaction and its relationship with tourists’ revisiting intentions is largely dependent upon the tourists’ cultural motivation.
5.1. Conclusions
This study examined how social media as a destination marketing tool is used to promote Badagry Diaspora Festival, drawing on the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was used. The study evaluated the causal relationship between social media, festival quality, website quality, e-WOM, and the mediating of tourist satisfaction and revisiting intention, as well as the moderating role of cultural motivation in the tourists’ intention to revisit the festival. The study provides evidence that social media, festival quality, and eWOM are significant antecedents for tourists’ perceived festival satisfaction of the Badagry Diaspora Festival in Nigeria. Festival satisfaction was revealed to be a significant antecedent for tourists’ intention to revisit. In addition, festival satisfaction and cultural motivation were found to significantly mediate and moderate, respectively, the relationship between perceived tourists’ revisit intention and its antecedents in attracting tourists to revisit the Badagry Diaspora Festival. It is therefore imperative to state that the success of tourism destinations in marketing the cultural heritage festival in Nigeria is basically dependent on the success of the festival event, which has created remarkable brand awareness.
The emergence of social media in promoting tourism destinations has been a rising research topic. Tourism has witnessed the promotion of various segments, especially in decision making and searching for information, promoting tourism publicity by focusing specifically on interacting with the consumer as the best practice. Leveraging off social media marketing for Badagry Diaspora Festival has proven to be an outstanding strategy for festival promotion. This paper suggests that an investigation on social media and destination marketing is still in its infancy stage in Nigeria. It is crucial to encourage wide-ranging exploration into the influence and impact of social media, which will serve as part of tourism management and a strategic marketing system as it relates to the entire tourism industry, including local festival destinations, in order to demonstrate the economic contributions of social media to the tourism and hospitality industry. Social media is no doubt a significant tool in marketing in developed countries like the UK and the USA [
21], as well as for developing countries [
67], which was also validated in this study for the Badagry Diaspora Festival in Lagos state.
5.2. Managerial Implications of the Study
This study contributes to the empirical justification of the theory of planned behavior because the findings revealed that the tourists’ intentions to revisit the Diaspora Festival are determined by festival satisfaction and cultural motivation, which are promoted by social media sites. Based from the evidence of this study, the TPB assumptions have been validated, which suggests that consumer behavior to revisit holds when some factors stimulate their individual behavior. In the case of this study, website quality social media, eWOM, and festival quality were proposed as antecedents to behavioral intentions, as well as using festival satisfaction as a mediating variable. This is with the view that the antecedent variables could possibly not have an indirect influence on the intention to revisit the festival. In addition, the TPB was extended to accommodate a moderating variable (cultural motivation). The significance of this variable demonstrates that in understanding the intention of tourists to revisit the Diaspora Festival, cultural motivation plays a significant moderating role. Hence, the tourist’s decision is based on careful judgment of the content of the festival (planned behavior).
In addition, this study suggested some valuable managerial implications. First, the study provides an empirical insight into consumer responses on valuable information to the planners, organizers, and exhibitors of the Badagry Diaspora Festival to design and provide quality festival products. The Lagos state Ministry of Tourism and the Nigerian government should modify and create an active website for tourism pages/accounts on major social media sites that can be constantly used as social media links to interact and engage with the African diaspora, and it can be tagged as “event announcement media”, which can be shared across all media channels. Social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and WhatsApp, should be frequently updated by qualified digital personnel who can respond to questions and complaints that can generate and maintain manage good image of the Badagry Diaspora Festival on social media platforms. Based on this, the social media platforms can serve as a good connection to tourists/medium for content analysis in the nearer future.
Secondly, the study uncovered the viability of the social media in creating the platforms, which can help promote tourists revisiting intensions of the festival. Currently, based on our observation, the DMOs marketing the diaspora festival event in Badagry Nigeria do not extensively recognize social media as a vital marketing tool for the festival. DMOs are however still complimenting the social media tools with other traditional way of marketing due to underfunding/neglect of the tourism sector. We advise that the DMOs should optimize the use of different kinds of options (blogs, website publicity, emails, websites) and social media sites to reach out to former festival attendees and keep them informed, and communicate with all service providers, such as travel agents, hoteliers and transport service providers, in order to boost the cultural heritage festival.
Thirdly, this study revealed the destination marketing strategies that will support the DMOs to implement innovative and suitable approaches for promoting the festival. The major strategy is to enhance the quality of the website and focus on the use of the social networking sites to market the festival. Quality local cultural heritage products from festival destinations, such as historic places, local foods, and hotel accommodation, should be packaged and advertised via the social media by the DMOs in order to improve their social media marketing activities in enhancing the festival quality. Additionally, the DMOs who are vested with the responsibility of the festival should focus on providing a festival program and activities that festival attendees admire by including thematic contents such “diaspora festival the black beauty nation” and “African legacy with cultural performances” to ensure superiority inspiration among festival attendees. This is essential because the findings of the study revealed the importance of cultural motivation in shaping the nexus between festival satisfaction and revisiting intention of the tourists.
Fourthly, DMOs should further employ the services of social media experts who understand social media tools and internet statistics to keep track of records on social media and festival events in order to disclose important key information about Badagry Diaspora Festival to tourist information centers in order to help generate a database for the festival revisiting intentions.
Fifthly, a periodic report should be sent to the National Tourism Board on the trends of social media and destination marketing as this will assist researchers and marketing managers strategize on how to make the Diaspora Festival a very pleasurable and memorable festival satisfaction to all festival attendees.
Sixthly, DMOs should try and implement good festival incentives that can give diaspora tourists affordable meals by using coupons that can serve as discount tickets on hotel accommodations, lodging houses, or eateries. The world is technologically driven, the use of ATM cards and cash paying machines should be reinforced in all local markets to enhance the festival by making it a cashless tourism destination that will be free from insecurity and hooligans.
Finally, the Lagos State Ministry of Tourism should ensure that the progress of Badagry Diaspora Festival is properly managed to ensure that the festival records are kept straight in measuring the festival development in terms of technological advancement so that the potential and existing diaspora tourist interest is sustained and preserved.
5.3. Limitation and Direction for Future Studies
Research on the linkage between social media as a marketing tool and the tourism and hospitality industry is diverse and requires multidisciplinary collaboration, which was not done in this study. So, for detailed analysis of the issues, future researchers should engage experts from different research areas, including tourism and hospitality management, information technology, marketing management, festival planners, tourism economist, behavioral science, and other related disciplines. In this way, the essential factors for the development of effective predictive models of tourism marketing in a social media environment can be enhanced. In addition, it will be interesting to investigate the mediating role of “wildcard events” (tourism crisis) in the model and the moderating role of the effect of “individual cultural values” concerning social media experiences with tourism destinations. Specifically, food and beverage quality and staff behavior have been identified as the two crucial attributes that can shape the attitudes of festival attendees. Thus, it may be beneficial to investigate these two characteristics individually and extensively in order to comprehend more clearly the specific features that influence the attitudes and revisiting intentions of the diaspora festival attendees. Nevertheless, it is evident from the study findings that the cultural heritage festival, which is otherwise known as the Badagry Diaspora Festival (The Door of Return Festival) in Lagos has the capacity to become sustainable if the DMOs and festival planners can use the findings from this study as a guide. Moreover, in as much as the tourists are satisfied with the festival, the intention to revisit will be encouraged and this will translate to the sustainability of the festival.