The influence and application of social media on Self-Help tourism groups in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Yu, Hsiao-Ju, 于曉茹
• Other Authors: Shen, Yung-Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/xabn9c

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 高階經理人企業管理碩士在職專班(EMBA) === 107 === The development of social media is having a major impact on human communication, and it also drives the bloom of Self-Help travel. The main purpose of this study is to understand how the information gathering behavior of overseas self-help tourists is influenced by the online social media, and further analyze what kind of contents attract users and bring network traffic and explosures. This study adopts in-depth interviews with 20 people who are the experienced Self-Help traveler. Based on the data collected and analysized, the main conclusions are as follows: 1. Most Self-Help tourists are much into browsing the travel online network. Travel pictures posted by relatives and friends on social media play a decisive role to impress and influce the travel decision which is significantly motivated and driven by social media. 2. The popularity of social media has resulted in huge increase of overseas Self-Help travelers to Taiwan. Along with the growing travel articles in public and word-of-mouth, the positive cycle is to see more people travel to cdertain attractions, bring in the tourism business and help the local economy. 3. The basic content requirments for Self-Help tourists on-line searching must be "real experience sharing ", "accurate information to be leveraged" and "user-friendly design of website". 4. In general, the website of Taiwanese travel agency is less attractive for Self-Help tourists although the contents are expected to be valued more. Self-Help tourists would appreciate the information from commercial travel platforms still as long as it provides trustworthy and useful info instead of selling products only. In conclusion, practical tourism information fundamentally attracts the great interests from Self-Help tourists. To provide the services to meet sepecific demands/requests in travel, the tourism industry is recommended to improve/enhance the online contents to attract customers as higher priority than promoting the products made or sold in the destination. The findings and recommendations of this study can be used broadly as a reference for marketing strategies of travel- related businesses.