Travel Information Search on the Internet: A Preliminary Analysis

Travel information search is a complex, dynamic and contingent process. Travel information search and planning on the Internet becomes more and more prevalent along with the development of information technology. However, the usability of the Internet as a travel information source still remains as a problem. This research intends to explore the interaction process between a travel information searcher and the Internet based upon the assumption that ravel information searchers search through the tourism information space following their semantic mental models and the mismatch between their semantic mental models and the semantic model of online conceptual tourism information space contributes to the futile and unsatisfactory travel information search process. An experiment of travel planning on the Internet was conducted and the results confirmed that the overall tourism information space is huge. Additionally, travelers appear to have a different mind sets as compared with the information on the Internet and this discrepancy contributed substantially to the usability problem of the Internet.