Looking for Tourism Related Information in the Social Media Landscape: an Analysis of Portuguese Tourists’ Habits

• Autor(a) principal: Roque, Vítor
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Raposo, Rui
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10314/3469
• topic: Interaction; Social media; Tourism; Tourists; Web 2.0

The ever evolving web2.0 phenomena and the almost daily based spawning of social media applications are producing radical changes in the way tourism destinations are promoted and also in the way tourists get the information they need. Understanding traveler communication and interaction patterns on social media is a key point for improving communication and marketing strategies design for and by tourism destinations. It it no longer a case of emphasizing on the search for a return on investment made on marketing, but rather the understanding the importance of a solid return on engagement with tourists and the long tail effect that this relation may have on a destination. Social media such as Facebook, Youtube and Flickr, packed with User Generated Content (UGC), have gained a center stage role with the online communities of tourists and have reshaped the way tourism related information is distributed, reaches tourists and influences their experience. In fact, social media allows potential tourists to collect a wide variety of multimedia information from different sources and use the experiences shared by others in order to prepare and sometimes enrich their own tourism related experience. This study aimed to understand and outline some aspects of the use of social media by Portuguese tourists throughout their tourism experience. The study is based on data retrieved from 1019 valid answers to an online questionnaire which was part of a PhD research project. The questionnaire reached respondents that, at some point, had experienced a visit to at least one Portuguese tourism region, including the islands of Azores and Madeira, and the data retrieved was used to characterize the respondents and also to identify their habits concerning travel and, in particular, the ways in which they use social media throughout their tourism experience.