Effect of Social Media on Destination Choice

Does social media
marketing affect your choice of destination?

Abstract

The importance for tourism destinations to have a good visual presence on social media is becoming more apparent. Social media is becoming more advanced and is offering more options for a tourist to visualise the destination before they decide to go. The following work will consider the destination marketing and how it markets on social media.  Using online questionnaires, the research aimed to establish whether Social Media Marketing directly affects a consumers’ choice of destination but the results of the data collection established that participants will put more reliance of traditional word of mouth rather than information found on social media.  For future research, it may be worth considering that whilst social media can have a profound influence on many people, there are also other motivations outside of other consumers’ opinions and view of a place such as: traveling for religious purposes or just a one of take a chance last minute booking.  

Key
Words: Social Media, Destination Marketing, Tourism, Motivations, Data Collection,
Electronic Word of Mouth.

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1.0 Introduction

In recent times, it has been estimated that there is almost 85% of
households now have a fixed broadband connection in the UK according to a
Keynote study, by the percentage that gives a market of around 55million people
that have access (Keynote, 2017).  With
this advancement, more and more people are replying on the internet, and more
specifically, Social media to help in the decision making of their purchases. 

Carr & Hayes
(2015) defined Social Media as:

Social media are Internet-based channels that allow users to opportunistically interact and selectively self-present, either in real-time or asynchronously, with both broad and narrow audiences who derive value from user-generated content and the perception of interaction with others.

This
definition has stemmed much of the discussion behind my proposed question for
research-the impact of social media marketing on traveler’s destination
choice.  Social media or social
networking has advanced in such way that it has become a valuable marketing
tool for companies but also proving to be a valuable source of information to consumers
playing a massive part in consumption decisions.  In a bid to increase market sales, companies
are now integrating Social Media into their campaigns as it gives them the
opportunity to interact with consumers on a personal or impersonal platform.  Companies need to be prepared that much
information, whether positive or negative, is being communicated from consumer
to consumer via social media sites and every day is influencing that consumers
pre-purchase and post-purchase actions. 
(Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2012) With the ability to readily ‘share’ information,
webpages, posts and images, consumer reviews have no replaced professional
reviews.  It seems that this new source
of information that is made available on social networking sites is on hand to
offer a richer and more varied set of reviews on products and is so widely
available it is proving to be more valuable to consumers than the traditional
word of mouth.  (Viglia, Minazzi and
Buhalis, 2016)

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According to recent statistics, there are over 2.01 billion monthly
active Facebook users active in June 2017 (Facebook, 2017).  This is one social networking platform, out
of many, that gives users the opportunity to share information but it can also
provide tourist experiences and destination choices between consumers.   Not just with Facebook, but other social
media and networking sites such as; Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Trip Advisor,
tourists are able to share their travel experiences, (both positive and
negative), with other consumers offering advice, recommendations and
destination feedback which will influence other consumers on their travel
decisions (Xiang &
Gretzel, 2010).  In one particular survey conducted by, WAYN
for the World Travel and Tourism Council, (2012), found that, ‘52% of
facebook users claimed their travel plans were affected by seeing pictures
belonging to family and friends of trips’. 
It has become
apparent that there has been a decline on those planning to travel relying on
guidebooks, maps to plan out routes and destinations and consultations with
travel agents.  With the growing social
media and networking stand, consumers are now turning to the experiences of
family, friends and social media influences to inspire them with new and
exciting travel plans (Brown, 2017).

Many destination boards have taken to the changes in how information is
shared via social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and many others by
creating profiles to become a place of advertising but also somewhere in which
they can monitor opinions and reviews of travellers following their visits to
specific destinations.  Larger cities
such as Liverpool have created profiles on Twitter @VisitLiverpool that has
support of 40.5 thousand followers meaning previous and potential travellers
are viewing tweets which about others experience of that destination.  The visitors can also access all the social media
platforms used by the destination marketing company on their webpage and
utilise these to plan or review their visits (Visitliverpool.com, 2017).

Due to advancements, this is just one smaller part of a bigger
destination-marketing tool used in conjunction with the Visit Britain brand to
encourage tourism from domestic and international visitors through the use of
social media. Visit Britain understands that this is a need, which has been
developed though growth of access to the internet, Visitbritain.com, (2017), states, “Social media is a vital
component of our marketing strategy. We’re strongly positioned on Twitter,
Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram, WeChat and Weibo to engage
actively with our target audience, ensuring they feel part of an engaged
community.”

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These advancements with engaging in social
networking can come at a price however, whereby a company may have to face the
backlash of negative media coverage as a result of a customers experience.   This was observed with latest
situation involving United airlines where a live video of a customer on an
overbooked flight was forcibly removed and injured.  This incident was recorded and shared on the
internet with millions of people from around the world.   

Due to the frenzy on Social Media, newspapers then began reporting on
this.  Helen Coffey, (2017) from The
Independent stated;

“People are using the hashtag #flight3411 to express their anger and concern at the footage, with many vowing they will not fly with United again in the future.”

Social Media can have major on tourists behaviour, having then a
detrimental effect on the sales of companies. 
The United Airline case is only one such example in understanding of what
implications Social Media can have on tourism. 
The power of social media is uncontrollable by many companies, as
witnessed in this case.

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Eric Qualman, (2012), expresses that, “Social
media touches nearly every facet of our personal and business lives…. Social
media is living and breathing, and it touches every part of an organization
from customer service and frontline sales to human resources and information
technology.”  While consumer
behaviour is the most researched topic in the marketing and consumer field,
(McIntosh and Thyne, 2005),  the objective of this study proposes
an analysis of the association of social networking sources to the choice of
holiday destination for travel consumers and whether Qualman’s claim that it is
the social media ‘frontline sales’ to consumers destination choice when booking
their travel experiences. 

The aim of this research
is to:

1. To investigate the effect of social media on tourist destination choice.
2. To explore how past experiences, affect consumers on their future
   decision of destination.
3. To review how a review how destination marketing has developed to take
   social media influences into account.

2.0
Literature Review

2.1 Social Media

For
many tourists’ destinations, how social media users perceive the destination is
a major influence on their success. The potential amount of information that is
available to travellers is enormous; the internet is a platform that is full of
important information, which could be exchanged easily between all parties
involved in the industry process (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). The reach of social
media is unquestionable Keynote (2015) believes that in 2014 alone social media
has witnessed a growth of 65% and shows that networks such as Facebook,
Instagram and YouTube with hundreds of millions of users along with many new
and improving social networking sites.

With
this expansion gives tourists the ability to find out information about destinations
all over the world; the information shared is not only from the destination
providers but also by other tourists that have experienced the outlet these
platforms allow for the sharing of personal pictures, videos and written views
from there time spent there. For many destinations, this is both good or bad as
the experiences shared may not always be flattering and it is not as easy for a
tourism destination to moderate what has been shared.  Marketers are now realising that social media
is providing power to consumers to provide feedback not just on a one to one
basis but to thousands of potential consumers at once (Papasolomou and
Melanthiou, 2012).  Social networking
sites allows the consumer the ability to gain knowledge on how previous people
found the destination during their visit. One major provider of this is
TripAdvisor is a website, which allows its users to place reviews and ratings
on all aspects of tourist’s destinations from the hotels down to the beaches.
Tripavdisor.com, (2017) believes ‘in the power of travel — and in helping you
make the most of every trip. With over 500 million candid traveller reviews, we
can help you make the right choice when you shop for hotels, restaurants and
attractions’ although how reliable this is remains to be seen.  It is widely known that hotels and some
destinations have the ability to also control what can be viewed by the sites
visitors. This then will not always give you a complete image when the provider
can control it at times.  As well as
this, some consumers see social networking as some sort of friendship and place
trust in the comments and reviews made by other consumers.  From this theory, it needs to be established
how much trust consumers are actually placing on the word of mouth of this
online world (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2012).

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The
ability to share information about experiences have developed into a simplified
method because people have access to the internet on any device worldwide. This
has a major impact on a destinations image and shows the influence of social
media on tourist spots.  In a review,
Papaolomou and Melanthious, 2012) suggest that future research should be placed
on the communication of marketers to consumers through social media.  However, this research will explore the
likelihood that consumers will use the readily accessible information available
on social media to make their decision with destination choice and how likely
they are to provide feedback to support their fellow consumers.  As well as this, a further strand to explore
is whether social media is leading the consumption world in today’s society or is
it just a phrase or ‘buzz word’ (Papaolomou and Melanthious, 2012).

2.3 Social Media Marketing

Social
media marketing is the use of different online social tools to market a product
of consumption targeting customers. Social media marketing can be categorised
as an online marketing tool that permits ‘‘marketers to communicate a brand’s
benefits, value proposition, and personality to its target audience’’ (Di Pietro, Di Virgilio and Pantano, 2012).

Social
media marketing is not altogether straight forward it cannot be completely
controlled by a team of marketing professionals the way a TV advertisement can
that is because on social media it is a world very much controlled by what the
consumer says and views. This for marketers makes the world of social media a
difficult one to work with.  Due to the
many forms of social media that is based upon content that has been created and
generated by the consumer on many outlets such a blogs, virtual communities,
tagging on social networking, Social Media Websites has risen in popularity for
travellers use and aid (Gretzel, 2006; Pan, MacLaurin and Crotts, 2007).

Using
social media as a marketing tool by tourism is key to the meet the current
generation trends. Social media gives the marketer the ability to target
specific groups on outlets such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram all of these
social networking groups show an individual’s personal trends, what they
searched on the internet or where they have visited show on a person’s specific
profile history. Tourism companies pay a fee to the social media provider to
target these trends in the person’s profile. Weber, (2009) claims that
segmentation has changed with the arrival of new platforms, focusing on social
and psychographic individualities. Pay for ads or Clicks is one way in which
companies market their products on social media there is two other forms of
digital marketing that social media marketers use the second one is owned
content such as a destinations own personal social media profile which allows
them to gain followers and to promote and advertise. The last way to direct
market on social media is earned content this to many tourism bodies is the
most effective and sought after as this is user generated content such as file
sharing reviews and such many tourism products try to find effective ways of
gaining this. Places like hotels have Tripadvisor.com review cards and window
advertisements and believe that if they are performing positively on this area
then it will be a more influential for of marketing. (Bagley and Lanz, 2014).

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2.4 Destination Marketing and Electronic Word of Mouth

A Destination Marketing Organisation is ‘any organisation, at any level, which is responsible for the marketing of an identifiable destination.’

(Pike, 2004, p. 14)

The way a destination is
marketed is key to the success or failure of the area. Tourism destinations
regularly have marketing teams specifically for the area.  The job of these bodies is to promote the
activities within the city for both possible visitors and persons of the city;
the organisation is focused on displaying the most attractive up to date
information on the destination.  Travel
agents and destination marketers are encouraged to uploads high class images
and reviews about these destinations through social media in order to grab the
attention of travel consumers.  This
gives further focus to the research in this study to observe how much influence
this marketing has on destination choice as opposed to traditional word of
mouth. 

Regardless of this,
without effective marketing, things can go seriously wrong and create a bad
image of a particular destination, which could result in a loss of income from
tourism.  Social media does have some
ability to influence consumer decisions and agents and marketers needs to make
use of this tool (Di Pietro, Di Virgillio and Pantano, 2012).

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While a solid online
presence is needed in such a technological era, it is not all that can be part
of the marketability on a destination. 
While marketers can produce attractive pictures in order to grab the
attention of the consumers it is other interactions that consumers face along
the way that can then influence future travel decision.  This then leads to their experiences being
shared through word of mouth, electronically or not.  A recent example of this was the Frye
festival-a major disaster that has been well documented online on media outlets
such as Facebook through their live feed, Twitter and Snapchat. The expensive
festival had been promoted by popular celebrities and bands that were due to be
in attendance.  However, on the day,
guests were greeted by the information of bands cancellations and high-profile
guests no longer in attendance.  Further
to this, the festival itself was cancelled and as a result many people attending
the event where left stranded in Barbados and the local tourism board claiming
no responsibility. This has created an awful image of both the island and the
possible festival may never happen again. 
It is imperative that agents and marketers understand that tourist
consumptions and their behaviour is heavily influenced by other interactions in
the pre, during and post-holiday and this needs to be a key factor in the
destination marketing strategies for marketers (Ye et al, 2011) and if this is
a negative experience may have severe consequences for the image of the
destination in question (Lee et al, 2002).

In
a study on how Social Networking acts as a tool for the choice of tourist
destination, Di Pietro, Di Virgilio and Pantano, (2011), aimed to establish
whether social media was beneficial in promoting and marketing tourist
destinations-hypothesising that communication through Electronic Word of Mouth
has a direct influence on the decision of destination choice for many consumers.  Unlike the study focused on Generation Y, the
participants were selected from various age ranges and occupations from
Southern Italy.  It was highlighted in
the research for the use of social media for tourism is still quite new and in
fact, to the extent that Italian consumers use social networking for their
choice in holiday destination is still quite underdeveloped (Kasavanna et al,
2010).    Similar to the Generation Y study,
participants are extensively using social media to make decisions on choice of
holiday destinations and as well as this the study does have areas of developed
through focus on background specifics of the participants.

2.5 Tourism Motivations

Motivation
was referred to as psychological needs and wants, these include essential
forces that provoke, direct, and incorporate a person’s behaviour and activity.
Since a paradigm of tourism is always related to human beings and to human
nature, it is a complex proposition to investigate why people travel and what
they want to enjoy. Many disciplines have been utilized to explain wonders and
features connected to motivation. In psychology and sociology, the definition
of motivation is focused toward emotional and cognitive motives or internal and
external motives. An internal motive is associated with drives, feelings, and
instincts. An external motive involves mental representations such as knowledge
or beliefs. From an anthropological point of view, tourists are motivated to
escape the routine of everyday life, seeking authentic experiences.

In tourism
research, this motivation concept can be classified into two forces, which
indicate that people travel because they are pushed and pulled to do so by
“some forces” or factors. According to Uysal and Hagan (1993), these forces describe how individuals are pushed by motivation
variables into making travel decisions and how they are pulled or attracted by
destination attributes. In other words, the push motivations are related to the
tourists’ desire, while pull motivations are associated with the attributes of
the destination choices Push motivations are closely related to inner or
emotive characteristics. Pull motivations, on the other hand, are connected to
exterior or cognitive aspects. (Yoon and Uysal, 2005)

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The motivation of the social media user is to
gain the most knowledge possible of the destination before deciding on where to
go they use the facilities at their disposal to compare the places that they
find most desirable and find where is most suited to their needs and the needs
of all parties involved with it. On the destinations side the motivation to
gain as big a following and as high a consumer back is key to them this
motivates them to meet the needs of the consumers both in online image and
presence but at the destination to ensure that it is being consistently met.
Following what new trends is socially acceptable and creating new online
positive feedback is away in which the destinations use social networking
outlets to promote business.

Tourists
also have a motivation whilst on holidays to use social media as an outset to
allow friends and family know where they are and what they are doing.  Many also believe this to be a way of
notifying those concerned that everything is ok. The second motivation people
have whist using their social media while at a tourism destination is the
process of boasting, showing off to gain social status or recognition of where
they are.  Tourists can share experiences
through sharing reviews and photographs (Berger & Schwartz, 2011).  The expansion of new media and mobile
technologies increases the possibility of real-time experience sharing and
encourages synchronic communication types (Bødker & Browning, 2012; Litvin
et al., 2008; Qualman, 2009; Shih, 2009). Increasingly, not only telephone
calls but also real-time electronic media such as short message services (SMS)
allow tourists to maintain relationships while away on holiday. Tourists may
thus gain a sense of real-time integration into home events by initiating
messages about their experiences by texting, sending photographs/video by
phone, using email and posting on Internet sites.  This goes hand in hand with the
decision-making process that consumers are faced with when making the decision
of where the destination will be. 

2.6 The Decision-Making Process

Consumer
behaviour involves ‘all activities directly
involved in obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and services,
including the decision processes that precede and follow these actions’ (Engel,
Blackwell, & Miniard, 1995. P.4)  In order for social media
marketing to be successful and effective with consumers, companies need to
understand the process in which consumers go through in order to make their
decision on destination choice.  The
decision making process is one of the five major aspects of consumer behaviour
in tourism that is under developed, leaving room for future research and
therefore stemmed the basis of the topic of research in this paper (Cohen et
al, 2013).  In their narrative review,
(Cohen et al, 2013) attempted to establish where the gap lies in consumer
behaviour in tourism and hoped to establish what the external influences where
on the decision-making process for consumers. 

Assuming that social media marketing has an effect on the destination
choice for many tourist, implies that the decision-making process is one that
taking planning and research for the consumer. 
However, Cohen et al (2013) has found research that challenges this
ideology.  Hyde and Lawson (2003) states
that the decision making process combines of both unplanned and planned
decisions as well as some impulsive choices. 
However, this could be argued that some planned decision can be a result
of extensive research through social media outlets, but also some impulsive
decisions made as a result of something that has been viewed on a social
networking site.  Although in this paper,
Cohen (2013) warns that urgent research is required in the field of the
decision making process, this paper only uses research up until 2012 and since
then further advancements with the web and social media has been made. 

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One particular advancement, is the
emergence of a sophisticated technology Web 2.0- a strong influence on
consumers that allowed the transformation in the travel decision-making
process. Web 2.0 brought the unidirectional communication flow of ‘the static
web’ to ‘the second phase’ of bidirectional communication. This had a huge
impact on the tourists’ behaviour (Ghandour and Bakalova, 2014).  This new effective change brought about new
consumers, which embraced the improvements by becoming digital consumers.

This
growth of Web 2.0 has transformed Social Media consisting of social networking,
various travel review websites, blogging and any internet based application
that allowed users to create and review content that can be shared with other
users (Mintel, 2013).  From this then brought
around Travel 2.0; Travel 2.0 being the development that the consumer could
keep up with the latest tourism trends, check out various offers and readily
find other consumer opinions on tourism products with much less difficulty
(Viglia, Minazzi and Buhalis, 2016).  Word
of mouth reviews were being brought to consumers from global scale with the
advancement to Electronic Word of Mouth as a result of Web 2.0 and Travel
2.0.   Muñoz‐Leiva,
Hernández‐Méndez and Sánchez‐Fernández (2012), express the opinion of
Travel 2.0, “users believe that using Travel 2.0 websites will improve their
performance when searching for information on a tourist destination and/or
hotel. Ease of use is related to website structure, that is, users find the
site simple to use, easily understand its contents and functions and can find
the information they want fairly quickly.”   

Web
and travel 2.0 was the beginning of where the social media and social media
marketing became a larger influence on tourism destinations. The freedom of
information lead to more and more places to share and express your feelings on
a place.

In
one study, focused around Generation Y aiming to study their reliance on Social
Media in the holiday decision making process. 
In this study, similar to the methodology in this research, surveys were
used in order to collect data.  The
researchers disregarded any surveys that were submitted from a participant over
the age of thirty-five.  However, this
could be a cause of concern for the reliability of validity of their research
because it is unknown when he cohort of Generation Y actually began.  The term ‘generation’ revolves around similar
attitudes and behaviours, not necessarily age (Benckendorff et al, 2010) and is
only estimated that Generation Y could vary between 1977-1983.  Therefore, it is not possible to use finding
to make generalisations about the whole Generation Y cohort.  It may have been worthwhile in this study to
analyse the questionnaires completed by over 35s in order to make a comparison
of the social media influences on different generations. 

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Despite
the fact that this study focused on a specific age cohort of participants, it
did not take into account cultural differences and backgrounds of the
participants.  It did, however, focus on
consumer behaviour before and after the holiday and found that social media was
readily utilised pre-holiday and post-holiday.  
Generation Y, in this study, did rely heavily on social media for
inspiration and ideas on destination choice as well as a platform for
expressing their opinions and views post-holiday.  This supports that ideas that many travellers
check social media outlets before making decision on destination choice (Fotis
et al, 2011) and that there is a heavy reliance on comments and photographs of
other consumers to aid in the decision-making process for tourism consumers
(Mintel, 2013).

With
my particular study, there will be no limitation on age of participants but
similar to this study, will focus on the influence of Social Media Marketing on
destination choice how this replaces the traditional reviews of word of mouth
from family and friends.  

3.0 Methodology

According
to Baggio and Klobas, (2011), “Tourism,
like many other human activities, relies heavily on data of all sorts and the
quantitative treatment of data and information collected in a wide variety of
ways is a crucial endeavour for both academics and practitioners.”

We
define quantitative methods as a collection of techniques and methods used by
researchers to assess or measure social phenomena (Cheia, 2010).  Quantitative surveys are often used in
tourism research where respondents provide their opinions on a stance using a
range of structured questions provided by the researcher.  In this case, primary quantitative data was
used using a survey.  This survey was
tailor and conducted for this study. 
Some disadvantaged have been highlighted in the past such as cost and
time, however, due to advances of the internet, the cost and time of running
these surveys have been significantly reduced. 
Survey experts find these methods of data collected valid and unbiased
as they believe that the information comes directly from the participant
without the researcher having to interact with the data entry (Dillman, 2007).

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The two main choices of data collection are
quantitative and qualitative research there is also the choice to use both in a
mixed method research technique.  This
can ensure that there is a greater understanding of the research by integrating
the two methods (Bergman, 2009).  Due to
timerestraints associated with the research, I felt that qualitative data would not allow
me to gain enough thorough and reliable responses through interviews or focus
groups. The quantitative method of questionnaires would allow me to use a
smaller sample group to make assumptions about a larger proportion without the
cost and time restraints (Hotlon and Burnett, 1997).  I chose to proceed with both open and closed
questions, this way it would give the person completing the questionnaire the
opportunity to elaborate on their answers and give me a better understanding of
why they chose the answer they did. The outlet to supply the questionnaires was
through an online website, which also allowed me to collect and process the
data on the website.

When
considering the questions for your research, it is important to ask that right
ones-they needs to result in valid and reliable feedback, they must test the
theory that is being researched and investigate a topic (Payne, 1951).  With this in mind, I felt that a ten-item questionnaire would help me to
characterise the data giving the participant opportunity to think about their
responses.  The questions all had
multiple-choice answers with a text box for follow up answers. The initial
number of participants requested was 150 I chose this number because I believe
that it would help in the analysis of them to create an image of who is
influenced by what.

Previously,
data collection would have been known to be costly and time consuming and y
decision to conduct online questionnaires was an attempt to reduce the time for
the data collection.  Although this is a
relatively new methods of data collection, online data collection is already
proving to be efficient and convenient for researchers (Mertler, 2002).  Limitations of using online data collections
may pose problems from a technical stance. 
This could arise from issues with the internet explorer, or from the users’
inability or inexperience with using the internet.  This could have been an issue with the access
of the questionnaire for this research as I obtained only 96 out of a possible
150 completed questionnaires. 

4.0 Findings

In
the following chart Figure 1, it shows what the demographic between male and
female was for answering the questionnaire. The questionnaire only had people
that identify as male and female to reply with just over 80% of the respondents
was female.  Only one person did not
respond to this question for reasons unknown.

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Fig.1

Fig
2.

Figure
2 displays the age range of the individuals 50% of these individuals ranged in
the 18-34 years old-35% in the 24-34 age category.  The remainder of respondents fall into 35 and
over.  It may be worth giving
participants the opportunity to be more specific when stating their age in
future research.  However, the fact that
50% of participants were under the age of 34 supports the above Generation Y study
and the reliance and confidence with using social media. 

Fig.3

Figure
3 displays the figures for people that used social media to research a destination
before selecting it.  This demonstrates
that a dependency for information on a specific is in 74% of respondents and
26% chose to go without the need for outside confirmation.  Although the ultimate outcome is that the
majority of participants rely mainly on word of mouth, there is still a clear
link and reliance on social media when choosing destination.

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Fig
4.

With
figure 4, this shows what people believe the influence of social media has on
their choice of destination. The largest number of people believe that social
media plays a moderate likely hood that it would influence their decision
making. Only 26% of participants are very likely to let social media influence
their choice of destination. 

Fig
5.

The
response to this question, in some manner supports the previous question.  It demonstrates that although many the
participants have said that an advertisement on social media has influenced, the
majority said that it did not have an influence on their decision.

Fig.6.

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Fig.7

While
many respondents expressed that if they were to make a complaint or promote a
specific holiday destination, they would use TripAdvisor, the majority of
participants still believe that the traditional word of mouth is more reliable
than social networking reviews.  According
to Bolton et al, (2013), the social media platform had actually existed since
1981, but it wasn’t until 2003 that it was actually widely adopted.  With this in mind, it may be this
inexperience or lack of knowledge that prevents the 51% of participants in the
study from trusting social media outlets for information on tourist
destinations.

5.0 Limitations and Future Developments

This study
could have shown a lot more information and has left gaps and motivations for
further research.  The study helps to fill a gap in knowledge that will
continue to exist in the literature. The questionnaire developed could have
been a lot longer to included more details of which webpage was the most
effective in its destination promotion. The questionnaire also needed a larger
number of respondents to correctly represent the public’s views.  In
further research, I would recommend increasing the numbers to over one thousand
respondents as I believe this could help to gain more data to analysis. The
main age range was also a poor reflection of the study with mainly the younger
respondents answering the questionnaire so targeting a larger audience like
with the Generation Y study and putting requirements on how many from each age
group could filter the results to bring more validity to the study. 
However, this could also highlight the lack of confidence older members of
society have in accessing the internet and using it for a reliable source of
information for their holiday destination.

 The
next recommendation would be to hold a focus groups over a long period to gain
the views of people within a group setting.  This would give the
researcher the opportunity to gain more information to compare and support with
the results of data collected from questionnaires.  A mixed method
approach would open the answers received in the questionnaires, as many of the
results were short and to a point. (Creswell, 2014)

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Through
focusing the research on more specific tourism destinations would be more
suitable as it would focus the study into how the destination marketing
organisations compare to others rather than having it as an open section to any
destination.  For example, I would focus on destinations that are becoming
increasingly popular and over a period of time and explore how and why this
population rises.  Would this be a result of social media?  It could
also help in understanding in where success is with one destination and why
another is failing.  This would be
beneficial for both tourism destinations to know where they need to focus their
marketing to increase the consumer numbers.

In addition
to this, it would be extremely beneficial to hold interviews with Tour Agents
and explore how they use social media for their method of promotion and
destination marketing.  One participant used Loka Travel to plan their
East Coast adventure and this was as a result of their pro-active use of
Instagram.  On further investigation of this, Loka’s Instagram is packed
with images of another backpackers’ experience on their trip.  Through
this, consumers can observe real life experiences of those who actually
experienced the company.  This further supports in my questionnaire how
one participant mentioned how the use of pictures for advertisement-this was
the main deal breaker for their choice of destination.  This could
highlight the power of using pictures for advertisements.   

6.0 Conclusion

The
aim of this dissertation was research how social media affects consumers
opinions on tourism destinations. With the use of linked studies, I was able to
explore strands to base my own research upon.  From this, I could understand the first links
made between Social Media and Tourism with the advancements that tour agents
and destination marketers have made to keep up with the internet trends.  It was easy to pinpoint that the
establishment of Web 2.0 gave Travel 2.0 the opportunity to followed suit and gave
the consumer more power and control over destination marketing and tourism
content.  Linking to this, I  wanted to understand social media’s role in
tourism and how developing a solid basis for social media and destination marketing
a large section of all tourist destinations was imperative for the tourism
consumer. The information found that domestic marketing organisations such as
the Visitbritian.org helped to understand that an accessible online presence
offering all platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and many of the other social
media networks should play an integral role in each destination plans.

The
data collection illustrated that there is a lot more data collection need in
both methods and it has been recommended that a mixed method research should be
employed for future studies. It has also been expressed the need to control the
time scale that you set for the data collection and analysis as this will bring
about more respondents and open the value of data collected.

It
is felt that many times social media is a constant in people’s lives but it
does not control every decision that people makes as demonstrated in my study
and data collection.  A consumers’ choice
of destination has many other factors involved. Social media marketing is
important for some people so it is effective and the work that tourism bodies
do in social media will continue to follow the times. 

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7.0 References

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Creswell, J. (2014). Research
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Mertler, C. (2002).
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Absolutely—we’ll weave in sharp analysis or eye-catching visuals like stats and charts to level up your paper. Whether it’s crunching numbers or designing a graph, our writers make it professional and impactful, tailored to your topic.

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8.0 Appendices

Fig.1

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Fig.3

Fig.4

Fig.5

Fig.6

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Fig.7

Fig.8

Fig.9

Fig.10

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