van der Veen, Monica (2023) Understanding the influence of user-generated content on the tourist experience of Millennials. Master thesis, Cultural Geography - Tourism Geography and Planning (TGP).
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Abstract
Tourism has always been a mostly visual experience and therefore does photography play an important role in the promotion of a destination. Images of landscapes, sceneries and iconic landmarks are widely represented and lead tourists to envision a destination in a certain way. Nowadays, technology influences every aspect of our lives and Web 2.0 applications such as Instagram have empowered travellers to not only gather travel information but also share their own experiences. This is referred to as user-generated content which significantly influence the tourists’ expectations regarding the destination they have chosen to visit. However, much of what is shared online is deceptive. While posting to social media, people are engaged in self-presentation and are therefore generally more inclined to select and emphasise the most positive facets. Therefore aimed this research to get a better understanding of how the consumption of user-generated content in the anticipatory stage of the trip influences the tourist experience. With a particular focus on the possible negative experiences as this is a largely unexplored area. This has been explored with a qualitative research method employing semi-structured interviews in combination with a photo-sharing component. This research revealed that the negative influences were mainly experienced due to a perceived difference between the visual representations and reality and because UGCs are only a limited information resource. Which led to the following negative implications for the on-site tourist experience: (1) interference with living in the moment and (2) trip satisfaction. Furthermore, it was confirmed that expectations play a significant role in travel satisfaction as not only the on-site experience was negatively influenced by contrasting visual representations and the real life situation at the destination, but also the overall satisfaction with the trip. It is therefore recommended that visual representations should exactly reflect the destination, this means that its imperfections should also to avoid disengagement from destination components, which negatively affects the creation of memorable experiences and consequently affects visitor satisfaction levels, revisit intentions, and recommendation decisions.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Name supervisor: | Muldoon, M.L. |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Sep 2023 11:08 |
| Last Modified: | 12 Sep 2023 11:08 |
| URI: | https://campus-fryslan.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/364 |
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