Page 71 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.82, # 2, 2025, pp. 61-78

Netherlands 41. 7 0.9 6.5 10.9 0.1 0.1 -9.2 5.6
Austria 39.5 2.0 1.0 0
Poland 34.5 0.8 -6.1 -7.3 15.3 -2.1 -14.4 11.3
Portugal 115.6 8.3 -8.3 20.9 2.5
Romania 189.7 2.2 12.9 11.9 11.8 5.9
Slovenia 46.1 2.7 -9.8 -7.2 -4.6 0 33.5 30.0
Slovakia -37.3 -1.2 -7.0 2.4 18.4 9.2 23.5 -8.3
Finland 32.6 0.4 0.6 30.9 10.9
Sweden 19.4 0.4 0.1 7.9 -2.8 -2.5

Source: Compiled by the authors

A great majority of enterprises uses social media (between 72% in Romania and 100% in
Finland in 2023 specifically in accommodation sector), especially social networks, but
using multimedia content sharing websites has almost doubled, while blogs became a less
popular tool. Enterprises prefer to use more than 1 social media type nowadays. Social
media tools are mostly used to develop the enterprise's image or market products and to
obtain or respond to customer opinions. But social media are less used for involving
customers in development or innovation of services.

In 2016-2024 tourism services exports increased almost by 50% in the EU member
states (table 2) especially in Romania, Portugal and Malta relatively the base year and
in Croatia, Malta and Portugal relatively their GDP. Slovakia was the only country
with a negative trend. The dynamics in Germany and Estonia was close to stagnation.

In accommodation sector Greece was the fastest to improve digitalization by website
use, Finland leaded by increase in paid advertisements in the internet, and Belgium in
social media use. The leading countries by digitalization dynamics in travel agencies
were Slovakia, Cyprus and Hungary respectively. But the situation is more
complicated than it may look at first glance. For example, zero increase in use of
websites by travel agencies in Denmark, Lithuania, Austria and Slovenia was because
100% of such enterprises already had websites in 2015.

There were also cases of relative dedigitalization (especially in Ireland and Poland),
which could evidence about either switching to other marketing tools or entering the
market by new companies which have not been digitized yet. But in a majority of
cases dedigitalization meant switching between various digital marketing tools
(Aliyev. Q. Umudvar, Guliyeva. U. Gunay (2025)). For example, Poland switched to
social media (especially multimedia content sharing websites) from company
websites and paid advertisements in the internet, and there was also an increased use
of geodata for targeted advertising there.

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