Impact of Social Media on the Travel Intention of Youth Travelers
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2017
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Social media can be defined as a computer-based system that allows people to share
ideas, thoughts, and information via virtual communities and networks. It has
influenced every aspect of human life, including how people consume. These changes
have had a substantial impact on businesses, primarily by enabling new marketing
strategies. Tourism, being one of the world's fastest-growing sectors, is undoubtedly a
part of all of these. The combination of social media with tourism will produce good
benefits for both the industry and the consumers. The purpose of this research is to learn
more about the impact of social media on the travel intentions of youth people. The
impact of social media on tourism may be observed in how people explore before going
on a trip. Especially, youth people are now encouraged to speak about their trip
experiences through social media. As a result, social media has altered how people
make decisions. There has been earlier research that focused on social media and its
impact on tourism, but the majority of the studies present obsolete information. This
overall study seeks to fill an undiscovered knowledge gap by investigating youth
tourists and the effect of social media on youth travelers' travel intentions. A stratified
sample strategy was used to perform both qualitative and quantitative investigations
with 100 young tourists across the country. Structured questionnaire was used to collect
primary data. As part of the first objective, descriptive analysis was used to identify the
perception of youth travelers on the use of social media. As second objective, collected
data were analyzed using Pearson coefficient correlation and regression analysis to
determine the impact of social media on youth travelers' travel intentions. As part of
the final objective, descriptive statistics were used to determine which social media
sites are most commonly used by young travelers. As a result of this research, the
perceived usefulness of using social media had a positive relationship. This means
youth travelers’ perception was good of using social media. On the other hand, the
impact of social media usage on the travel intention of youth travelers has a beneficial
impact on the intention. As well as, when it comes to the frequently used social media
platform of youth travelers, Facebook and other platforms are using an orderly manner.
Therefore, the tourism sector can target youth tourists by using social media platforms.
Creating attractive content, and sharing travel experiences by using blogs/ FB posts,
etc. will help to attract more.
iv
Keywords: social media, Youth travelers, Travel intention, Tourism sector, Travel
experience
Description
Keywords
Hospitality, Tourism and Events Management degree programme (HTE)