A Study on Social Media’s Impact on Travellers’ Choice of Destination

Dr. Gladstan P.D

Travellers’ Destination, Social Media, Word-Of-Mouth, Component Analysis.

Travel and tourism ranks among the most promising industries globally, and information plays a critical role in this field. Nowadays, the manner in which travellers use this information during their travel decision-making process has evolved. The extensive advancement of Information and Communication Technology, particularly within the tourism sector, is one of the factors that has driven this change. Social media are engaging communication platforms typically utilized for community-driven contributions, content sharing, interactions, and cooperation among individuals. Notable social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and others. These social media outlets act as sources of information and impact decision-making processes. Experiences from travel, along with photos, videos, and other media shared on social platforms, can impact future tourists when choosing their destinations. This research aimed to explore how social media influences the decision-making of tourists. Data were gathered from 167 participants utilizing a judgmental sampling method. The gathered data were examined through principal component analysis, resulting in the reduction of 15 variables to two factors (social media information regarding the destination and social media word-of-mouth). Additionally, the level of impact of the identified factors on tourists’ choices for destination selection was assessed through regression analysis, indicating that these two factors account for 52.2% of the data variance.

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