Tourism and new media
A tangible connection to a place is a significant factor in a visitor’s propensity to travel to a specific destination. That connection point could be friends or relatives in residence, the recommendation of a trusted source or exposure via media such as TV and film. But now social media has an increasingly important role to play in destination selection.
Social media is a term used to describe the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media. It can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Examples that are particularly significant to the tourism industry include video sharing site You Tube and Flickr, the photo sharing site.
A search for your favorite destination on Flickr returns well over a million photos and a lot of photographer interest groups. It is possible to check out the view from hotel windows, the most picturesque scenes from every time of year, people’s favourite restaurants and destinations.
You Tube has also a lot of videos tagged with places of holidays, the most popular of which has been viewed million times and attracted viewers comments.
And it is these user comments that are a major difference between traditional passive media and social media – critically, with social media there is a two-way exchange of information.
Social media has the potential to undertake some of the functions of film and television in raising awareness and creating emotional engagement with a place. Additionally, the two-way information flow inherent in social media, the recommendations and the very authentic, personal nature of the contributions also place it close to the realm of recommendations from family and friends.