Destination Information Sources for Itinerant Holidaymakers: A Study of Island Hoppers in Greece

Abstract

This article explores information sources for destination decision-making in the underresearched context of mobile tourism with a quite low level of pre-tour decisions. The questionnaire-based study attends to this gap through updated documentation of vacationer use of online networking sites, review sites, and other information sources. The results show that conventional word-of-mouth was still decisive for destination choices in this context of island hopping in the Aegean, Greece. Websites with traveller evaluations proved more popular than guidebooks, indicative of the advance of usergenerated content (eWOM). Nevertheless, guidebooks were nearly as important as review sites, contrasting several studies and indicative of a continued or renewed guidebook interest. Despite some earlier assertions, there were only small differences in employment of internet-based information sources between younger "digital natives" and older "digital immigrants". Information conveyed through social networking sites was of little importance for destination decision-making for these tourists, contradicting some of the literature. Particularly to attract younger holidaymakers and first-time visitors, destination marketing organisations might encourage more vacationers to post photographs and videos on the internet (visual eWOM).

Hybrid tourist information search German tourists' combination of digital and analogue information channels

“…Guidebooks and maps by trend become slightly more important during travel, which is logic as they are easily accessible anywhere and anytime, independent of Wi-Fi or other circumstances. This outcome goes in line with Steen Jacobsen’s (2018) results on tourist information search behaviour on Greek islands. In contrast to web pages, guidebooks are highly valued even after the journey, as status symbols in the readers’ bookshelves.…”

“…Björk and Kauppinen-Räisanen (2015), Murphy et al. (2016), and Steen Jacobsen (2018) emphatically confirm the coexistence of analogue and digital information channels. Björk and Kauppinen-Räisanen (2015) analysed the chosen channels both before and during travel and state that tourists remain largely true to chosen channels.…”

Tourist information channels as consumer choice: the value of tourist guidebooks in the digital age

“…The use of travel guidebooks has been greatly challenged by the diffusion of digital information channels. Since the early 2000s, the market for guidebooks has shrunk due to the development of information technologies, and particularly to the ubiquitous access to the Internet through devices like smartphones and tablets (Jacobsen, 2018;Peel & Sørensen, 2016a, 2016bStoller, 2018). However, although information is largely available through other channels, print guidebooks are still used and bought, and in the last few years their sales have been on the rise again (Dickinson, 2018;Stoller, 2018).…”