The effect of travel influencers on travel decision-making within generations Y and Z

Absztrakt (kivonat)

This paper investigates the question of the genuine effect of travel influencers on traveling habits. The study examines whether people’s traveling habits are really changing due to the popularity of travel influencers’ content or not. The topic was chosen based on the fact that admiration for such content on certain social media platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok has been growing over the past years. Thus, the paper aims to find out whether this admiration comes from the devotion to traveling and discovering new places or it simply arouses from the love of consuming such content for one’s own entertainment purposes. Travel decision making has been a great topic of research in the past decades and continues to be an interest of consumer behavior investigators in general. Previous researchers support that such behavior is based on a stepwise travel-decision making model, which includes the step of influence, that is, inspiration coming from an external source. In this case, the study wishes to examine the effect of one particular influence: the travel influencer phenomena on social media, specifically the content that these influencers provide their audience with. The research was carried out by three specific research methods, namely literature review, focus group and questionnaire. The paper was based on the works of authors such as the Dutch social psychologist Bas Verplanken, or researcher Ulrike Gretzel, whose works are outstanding in the research field of influencer marketing in tourism. The focus group of the study were the members of Generations Y and Z, that is, individuals between ages 41 and 26, and 25 and 18, as they are the dominant generations in regard to travel decision-making and the influence of micro-celebrities. The questionnaire consisted of 34 individual elements including single-choice, multiple-choice, short answer and linear scale questions and has received 176 responses in total. The research was carried out based on the following hypothesis: The content of travel influencers on social media inspires their audience, and therefore changes their traveling habits. Based on the findings of the research it can be concluded, that although the content of travel influencers has become increasingly popular over the last few years, they do not have a significant effect on the travel decision-making of the members of Generations Y and Z. The research, however, does have limitations, such as the low number of participants or the uneven distribution between the members of Generation Y and Z amongst respondents. The presented findings in this paper offer some preliminary fact that travel influencers do not have a significant effect on the travel decision-making of Generations Y and Z. Further research is required in this topic in order to overcome the limitations of this study and address other research questions, such as the issue of trust as a sociopsychological phenomenon in terms of the relationship between influencers and the tendency of following their advice shared on social media.