Social media influence on millennials travel choices

SOCIAL NETWORKS INFLUENCE ON

MILLENNIALS TRAVEL CHOICES

Qualitative research for professor

DECEMBER 2018

Introduction

"The next generation of customers and the [current] generation have turned to social media to get information...It's quick, immediate, up-to-date and it's always at their fingertips. If we want to connect and have an effective campaign, that's the way. It's not an option —it's definitely a requirement." (Hotel Business, 2012, p. 12).

Millennials have grown up surrounded by high-tech technologies, the Internet, social network and a need to be connected in 24/7. The size of this generation is huge with almost 79 million millennial present, the need to date their needs is becoming more and more important.

They can be seen as adventurous, tech-savvy, made-to-feel and special dream followers  with income to spare, marketers, especially in the travel industry.

The data used in this research are meanly articles, pictures and posts on social medias, videos/vlogs and interviews to millennials, both students and workers.

The spreading role of social media in the travel industry is a central topic in research studies. Social media plays a relevant role in different aspects of tourism, especially in decision-making behaviours  information search, and marketing practices so to increase the interaction with customers.

The main users of internet as well as the highest market tourism slice is represented by millennials so that leveraging off social medias to market tourism services is proven by marketing companies to be an excellent strategy.

The aim of this study is to understand how much the travelling choices of millennials have been impacted by the use of social media during the decision-making process

What motivates young generations to travel? Which are the values behind their motivations? Are internet and social networks having a role on that?

Keywords: travel, social networks, motivation

List of contents

Literature review        3

Social media        3

Social media influence on travel process        4

Conclusion        5

Methodology        6

Participants        6

Limitations        6

Findings        7

Discussion        8

Study conclusion        9

Questions        10

Coding        11

References        13

Literature review

The literature review is used as  an important tool to provide a better understanding and knowledge of the research topic.

In my research work, I have collected and analysed information about previous literature, scientific journals, articles, social medias posts, and books. Taking into consideration previous theories on travel motivation, and the social media presence the daily life of millennials an outcome about how behaviours and tourism industry have changed so far has been analysed.  

Social media

Social media are as stated by Kietzmann, Jan H (2011) ‘interactive computer-mediated technologies which facilitate the creation and sharing of ideas, information, interests and other forms of expression trough virtual communities’.

In a global context of over-information, development of information  and communication technologies and therefore interactivity and vitality, social networks are innovative tools to search for, launch or promote a tourist destination.

When referring to social networks, the study considers social news, social networks, blogs, and media sharing. Some, are nowadays experiencing an explosion of their attendance, considering people aged between 18 and 25, we have 1 billion users daily on Facebook, 75millions users daily on Instagram, 100 million on Twitter

Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat have made wanderlust contagious. Based on a  quick research, there are currently 14.8 millions posts tagged with ‘travels’, on average 700.000 posts each week.

Each of them plays an active role in giving out, exchanging, receiving information without any barriers.

Social media influence on travel process

The growing popularity of social networks is shaking up the traditional tourism industry, in particular when talking about millennials. The question of the control of the message, of the image, is at the center of the concerns of the professionals of the promotion.

The majority of the studies found were focusing just on a certain phase of the travel process, in particular the research one; just two empirical studies have been found concerning the overall impact of social media during the whole travel process and none of them has focused on a particular segment of population.

The first one is a study by Cox, Burgess, Sellito and Buultjens (2009) that tries to reveal the role of socials in the travel-decision process and the reliability of the founded information. The authors tried to focus on the behaviour of social media users toward the usefulness of these against the non-users and  the reliability and importance of the information online compared to traditional sources. The online survey suggested that socials were used after the holiday destination was chosen, rather than to set a choice of destination. During and post-trip usage was found very limited. Some limitations of this study have been found, the subject were not just travellers but also hypothetical ones also, people interviewed were asked to register to a specific tourism website, and so a preference of a certain source of information was already there.

The second study has been made by Fotis, Buhalis and Rossides (2012) this, tries to give an overall view of the role and impact of socials in the overall process, proving datas on usage levels, level of influence, scope and level of trust.

What they’ve found is that socials were used predominantly during the post-trip stage to share experiences and photos with other travellers or  to remain connected with family and friends as the fig n.1 suggests.

Socials were also used during the pre-trip stage for the purpose of information search about potential destination, leisure activities looking for accommodation trough them was found less attractive. The changes in holiday due to information found online has also been observed, in contrast with the previous theory which was instead more focused on official information.

...