engleski

TripAdvisor in Organising a Vacation: Tourists’ Characteristics and Types of Information

For decades printed information sources have been used in information gathering process in tourism and personal contact with tourism providers in the process of organizing a vacation was needed. This trend began to change with the introduction of computers, in particular with the development of Internet and social networking web sites. Internet can be used for many different purposes that include promotion of tourism destination, creation of tourism destination image, but it is also an excellent tool in organising a vacation. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of tourists who visited Istria County, Croatia in 2015 from the aspect of using TripAdvisor as a tool in organising their vacation. Data was collected through self-complete questionnaire on a sample of tourists staying in hotels and camping sites in nine tourism towns. This study was conducted from July through September in 2015. A total of 1554 responders were taken into analysis. Based on the descriptive results a little bit less than 30% of responders used TripAdvisor for organising their vacation. First time visitors relayed more on TripAdvisor compared to repeat visitors and country of origin also played important part in using TripAdvisor for organising vacation. Information about beaches, cultural heritage and restaurants in Istria County, Croatia were the most commonly searched types of information about the destination.

tourists’ characteristics ; types of information ; TripAdvisor ; vacation organisation

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