Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
detached and objective) reviews of travel fi rms. However, Scott and Orlikowski found that by
refusing to divulge details of its ranking algorithm, the company '. . . effectively reinstates the
patriarchal dependency from which they claim to have rescued the world of travel' producing,
'material effects on business and management. Indeed for some tourism and hospitality
enterprises, such accountability can mean the difference between profi t and loss, surviving a
season or deciding to close down' (2012: 39).
Indeed it is this very stark, almost brutal set of consequences brought about by the practices
of sites such as TripAdvisor which brings about the need for much more detailed and systematic
research into the use and consequences of UGC as a communications medium.
Perhaps the most widely cited piece of research on eWOM in the tourism context is Litvin,
Goldsmith and Pan (2007), which argued that travellers rely on the experiences of others because
of the intangibility aspects and the experiential nature of tourism. In their review of the literature
on WOM it became very clear that there is a dearth of research on WOM in the tourism fi eld.
Litvin
et al
. noted that WOM originated out of an interest in the role that opinion leaders play
in consumer trends and purchase behaviour. Secondly they noted that the main mediating
variables were infl uences on the originator and infl uences on the receiver of the WOM message.
These are evidently changing in the era of eWOM, when the personal characteristics and/or
identities of unknown other tourists may exact infl uences on the behaviour of other travellers
who access the reviews for information purposes.
The purpose of viral campaigns and increasingly for many communications is to generate
'buzz', otherwise known as the amplifi cation of marketing efforts through the active or passive
involvement of third parties (Carl 2006), and thus there is a need to understand social infl uences,
and how different forms of WOM infl uence affective, cognitive and behavioural aspects of tourist
behaviour (Litvin, Goldsmith and Pan 2008). Policing of blogging and review sites has emerged
as a contentious issue, as there is often little regulation and so much at stake for businesses that it
prompted Litvin
et al
. to argue that abuse of online communities would take little effort or
imagination. This might be in the form of 'stealth' marketing (i.e. employing tactics that engage
the prospect without them being aware of the fact that they are being marketed to).
Therefore not only are studies required which critically examine the communications context
in which online recommendations are produced and consumed, there is a need for more general
and fundamental research on the effects of different sources of information on destination image
formation and/or travel decision making. Murphy, Moscardo and Benkendorff (2007) argue that
there are very few studies that confi rm these linkages.
Trust and credibility in tourism marketing communications
The success or failure of communication is partially determined by the credibility of the message,
but also crucially by the credibility (trust and expertise) of the source of the message (Smith and
Zook 2011). This has already been raised as a perennial issue for tourism marketers as WOM is
often seen as more credible than 'offi cial' sources in tourism marketing. However, there are
remarkably few efforts amongst the tourism academy to explore issues of trust and credibility.
Trust exists when an individual has confi dence in the reliability and integrity of the word of
another individual. Therefore individuals expect that the information they receive from a
company is honest, responsible, fair, reliable and benign. Whilst the importance of trust has been
highlighted early on in the services marketing literature (Morgan and Hunt 1994), and issues of
trust, ethics and honesty are implicit in much of the discourse surrounding tourism marketing
and particularly in the context of sustainability (Wheeler 1995; Lansing and deVries 2007), and
are addressed in relation to price setting and ethics in tourism price and revenue management
