Assessing The Potential Of Social Media To Reflect Global Tourism

Increasingly, people use Social Media to relate their experiences and thoughts regarding travel and tourism. Others use this information to plan better and make better decisions in the context of travel and tourism. Several studies have investigated trust in, contribution to, and consumption of tourismrelated Social Media and its impact on people’s behavior and decisions. However, it is largely unclear how and to what extent Social Media data on travel and tourism actually reflect offline travel and tourism activities. We compared data on visitors per country from the United Nations World Tourism Organization to travel reviews from a virtual travel community from 2000 to 2009. We found them to correlate quite strongly, which indicates that travel and tourism are quite well reflected in Social Media, at least at the aggregate level of countries. This finding may have implications for research on tourism-related Social Media as well as for how Social Media reflects other offline phenomena besides tourism. Comparability of both data sources, limitations of the study, and opportunities for further research are discussed.