Travelers' Portfolio of Online Information Sources for Travel-Related Information

摘要

The remarkable advances in information technology (IT), particularly those with respect to the Internet, have fundamentally changed the way tourism-related information is distributed and the way people plan for and consume travel. The Internet is a well-known means of acquiring a wide range of information and allows customers to directly communicate with travel websites to request information such as destinations, accommodations, attractions, restaurants, shopping and so on. Although there is a lot of tourism-related research that has been done on online information searches using only one type of online information source, there is a shortage of research on categorizing online information sources and then comparing and analyzing them. Since the majority of customers retrieve information from many kinds of information sources on the web in order to optimize their choices, it is essential to define the differences in online information sources and identify distinct characteristics or properties on each online information source in order to understand the needs and tendencies (attributes) of customers.