“…In a virtual community, members collaborate for a common purpose and share similar interests (Kim, Lee & Hiemstra, 2004;. ICT have empowered individuals and re-shaped the process of seeking, retrieving and exchanging information (Sigala, Christou & Gretzel, 2012;Lichy & Kachour, 2016). The travel and tourism literature has examined the juncture of brand communities and virtual communities, such as Couchsurfing (Rosen, Lafontaine, & Hendrickson, 2011), Tripadvisor.com, Virtualtourist.com and Mytravelguide.com (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010).…”