The effects of perceived relevance of travel blogs' content on the behavioral intention to visit a tourist destination

The tourism industry is characterized by ever-increasing competition, causing destinations to seek new methods to attract tourists. Traditionally, a decision to visit a destination is interpreted, in part, as a rational calculation of the costs/benefits of a set of alternative destinations, which were derived from external information sources, including e-WOM (word-of-mouth) or travelers' blogs. There are numerous travel blogs available for people to share and learn about travel experiences. Evidence shows, however, that not every blog exerts the same degree of influence on tourists. Therefore, which characteristics of these travel blogs attract tourists' attention and influence their decisions, becomes an interesting research question. Based on the concept of information relevance, a model is proposed for interrelating various attributes specific to blog's content and perceived enjoyment, an intrinsic motivation of information systems usage, to mitigate the above-mentioned gap. Results show that novelty, understandability, and interest of blogs' content affect behavioral intention through blog usage enjoyment. Finally, theoretical and practical implications are proposed. Tourism is a popular activity in modern life and has contributed significantly to economic development for decades. However, competition in almost every sector of this industry has intensified during recent years & Pan, 2008); tourism service providers are now finding it difficult to acquire and keep customers (Echtner & Ritchie, 1991; Ho, 2007). Therefore, methods of attracting tourists to a destination are receiving greater attention from researchers, policy makers, and marketers. Before choosing a destination, tourists may search for information to support their decision-making By understanding the relationships between various information sources' characteristics and destination choice, tourism managers can improve their marketing efforts. Recently, personal blogs have become an important source for acquiring travel information With personal blogs, many tourists can share their travel experiences with others and potential tourists can search for and respond to others' experiences. Therefore, a blog can be seen as an asynchronous and many-to-many channel for conveying travel-related electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM). By using these forms of inter-personal influence media, companies in this industry can create a competitive advantage (Litvin et al., 2008; Singh et al., 2008). Weblogs are now widely available; therefore, it is not surprising that the quantity of available e-WOM has increased (Xiang & Gret-zel, 2010) to an extent where information overload has become a Empirical evidence , however, indicates that people may not consult numerous blogs for advice; the degree of inter-personal influence varies from blog to blog (Zafiropoulos, 2012). Determining …