Bloggers’ reported tourist experiences: Their utility as a tourism data source and their effect on prospective tourists

Abstract

The present study evaluates the value of tourists’ blogs as a research data source by using them to evaluate the tourist experience and to assess their influence on the decision-making process of prospective tourists. The blogs of 103 tourists visiting South Tyrol, 32 written in English and 71 written in Italian, were analyzed using textual and image content analysis. The text of 246 comments posted to these blogs was analyzed to evaluate the possible influence of bloggers’ narrative on prospective tourists. The results show cultural differences in the way tourists use blogs. Italian blogs appear to have more potential to influence the decision-making process of prospective visitors since their comments often contain recommendations and authors’ declaration of their own future intentions to travel to South Tyrol. They also demonstrate significant potential for revealing market-relevant aspects of tourists’ experience although they do not always convey the ‘experience essence’.

Trust and Involvement in Tourism Social Media and Web-Based Travel Information Sources

“…The sharing of travel information by blogging has received broad attention from tourism researchers (Enoch & Grossman, 2010;Huang, Chou, & Lin, 2010;Mack, Blose, & Pan, 2008;Schmallegger & Carson, 2008;Tussyadiah & Fesenmaier, 2008;Volo, 2010;Wenger, 2008). Blogs became in vogue at the millennium and can have dissimilar levels of reach, from a few readers to many thousands.…”

“…Such studies show on one side how social media are winning momentum as emerging tourism practices. Then again, they also critically discuss the quality of tourists' contributions and limitations of online communicative practices (Jacobsen & Munar, 2012;Volo, 2010). Additionally, some studies have looked at motivation factors that impact on tourists' contributing online behaviour.…”

“…Blogs became in vogue at the millennium and can have dissimilar levels of reach, from a few readers to many thousands. However, blogs seem not to be as credible as direct word-of-mouth (Mack et al, 2008) and the quality of tourists' contributions on this medium has been questioned (Volo, 2010;Wenger, 2008). Also, microblogging is a popular form of social media communication and news broadcast, enhancing immediate and real-time communication (Munar, 2010;Zarrella, 2010).…”

“…Availability of social media platforms and technologies allows tourists increasingly to digitise and share online knowledge and information (Buhalis & Law, 2008;Volo, 2010) and also emotions and experiential moments (Jacobsen & Munar, 2012). Such transformations are partly related to Web technologies that provide global reach of content, for instance, videos posted in media-sharing site such as YouTube (Qualman, 2009).…”

Destination website quality, users’ attitudes and the willingness to participate in online co-creation experiences

“…For the destination marketing organizations (DMOs), it is crucial to maintaining bilateral communication with online consumers. The natural experience of tourism and the quick development of online networks, together with a greater tendency to share information on behalf of the tourists, have generated a framework where one learns from the experiences of others when deciding on a destination (Volo, 2010). Tourist behavior in terms of creating, sharing, and disseminationg information has been analyzed by platforms such as travel websites (Yoo and Gretzel, 2008), blogs (Volo, 2010) or social networks (Munar, 2011;Oliveira and Panyik, 2015).…”