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Research suggests destination managers should pay attention to every stage of a visitor’s journey, as what tourists share en route via social media can influence their subsequent travel experience
Research Corner | A partnership between Macau Business and Macao Institute for Tourism Studies (IFTM)
An academic paper involving a scholar from the Macao Institute for Tourism Studies (IFTM) has looked at the influence on travel experience of social media ‘sharing’ by tourists during the ‘travelling to the site’ stage of their journey.
For the research, Dr Sharleen Chen Xiaolian, an assistant professor at IFTM, collaborated with Prof. Li Xi and Xie Jiayu from the Faculty of International Tourism and Management at City University of Macau. Together, they explored tourists’ motivations when sharing social media posts between setting off for, and actually arriving at, a destination. The researchers also looked at how that behaviour could impact the tourists’ subsequent travel experience.
The study, “Cannot wait to share? An exploration of tourists’ sharing behavior during the ‘traveling to the site’ stage”, was published in the scholarly journal Current Issues in Tourism. The researchers said they had identified a gap in existing literature: their study stood out as in likelihood the first to examine exclusively the topic of social media ‘sharing’ by tourists during the en route phase of their journey.
“As one of the earliest stages of the tourism experience, tourists’ sharing behaviour during the ‘traveling to the site’ stage undoubtedly affects their subsequent travel experience,” the research team asserted.
The researchers conducted 30 interviews with users of the popular Chinese social media platform WeChat. All of them had used the platform in the previous year to share travel experiences during the en route phase.
Motivations of sharing
The findings indicated that during the inbound travel phase, journeyers had a strong inclination to share visual content on social media platforms.
‘Pinning’ their location via social media emerged as the second most popular form of content sharing while en route. It enabled users to share and record their location with minimal extra effort, such as the need to enter text information. “By identifying their location, this geotagging feature satisfies tourists’ desire to share their tourism experience with others,” the authors argued.
The study identified two types of motivation for social media sharing during the inbound stage: ‘hedonic’ and ‘utilitarian’. The first included the wish to express personal emotions, to maintain social media habits, and to ‘show off’ to others. Utilitarian motivations encompassed recording one’s life, socialising, notifying others of safe arrival, seeking travel-related advice, building one’s self-image, and sharing travel-related information.
The research also pinpointed three distinct ways in which social media sharing during the ‘travelling to the site’ stage affected the sharer’s subsequent travel experience. Utilitarian motivations regarding sharing activities, as well as the feedback received, could alter the mood of the sharer. Sharing based on hedonic motivations, and corresponding feedback, could modify the sharer’s mood, lead them unexpectedly to make changes relative to the itinerary they had originally devised, and also increase participation in sharing travel-related information.
Based on their findings, the authors stressed the importance for destination managers of having a comprehensive understanding of a tourist’s entire travel experience. This would offer destination managers the opportunity to have a positive intervention during each stage, rather than just at the stage when the tourist is on site.
The study recommended that destination management organisations introduce innovations allowing them to interact with tourists during the inbound phase. One suggestion from the researchers was that destination managers flavour that engagement with elements unique to their tourism spot, so that trippers have a positive memory of the very act of travelling.
– The researchers
Prof. Li Xi is executive associate dean at the Faculty of International Tourism and Management at City University of Macau. He holds a PhD in Urban Studies and Regional Economics from East China Normal University, in Shanghai. Dr Li’s areas of research include tourism destination management, and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) industry management.
Dr. Xie Jiayu received her PhD degree at the Faculty of International Tourism and Management of City University of Macau. She is now a lecturer at the School of Tourism and Historical Culture, Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University.
Dr Sharleen Chen Xiaolian is an assistant professor at the Macao Institute for Tourism Studies (IFTM). She holds a PhD from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests cover consumer behaviour and experience in the fields of hospitality, events, and tourism; destination image and marketing; and gender, health, and tourism.
– The paper
Jacky Xi Li, Xie Jiayu and Sharleen Chen Xiaolian: “Cannot wait to share? An exploration of tourists’ sharing behavior during the ‘traveling to the site’ stage”, Current Issues in Tourism, Volume 25, Issue 22, 2022, pages 3640-3656
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