Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2 most bloggers are blogging about their longer trips, indicating increasing long-term and
multiple-destination travellers, and this points to opportunities among destination marketers
for possible joint marketing communication strategies to capture this market;
3 the top three most important motivations for blogging:
a
updating family and friends about their whereabouts;
b keeping a record of travels; and
c
sharing experiences
indicate management and marketing implications such as providing travellers with access
to the Internet to share immediate memories of their experiences which includes holistic
evaluation of the place as they update their family and friends.
According to King (2002), tourism marketing is very much focussed on destination and calls for
a focus on tourist experiences. The use of travel blogs as a research data can facilitate efforts to
shift marketing from destination-based to experience-based. As demonstrated above, travel blogs
provide in-depth understanding of tourist experiences, particularly in terms of how tourists
constitute these experiences through and in travel blogs, which reveals aspects of tourist
experiences that are worth blogging about. This information can provide key insights to
marketers on how to market the destination based on tourist experiences as told by tourists
rather than the destination features. This can also aid in the formulation of marketing com-
munication strategies, improving and reinventing destination images. From stories in the travel
blogs, a consistent mix of brand elements can be identifi ed to assist in defi ning a distinct
destination image (Prebensen 2007). Destination marketers should be able to determine aspects
of a tourist experience through blogs that have rich emotional meaning, great conversation value
and provide high anticipation for their potential tourists (Morgan, Pritchard and Piggott 2002;
Tasci and Kozak 2006). In addition, marketers should bear in mind that as bloggers write about
the destination, images are reshaped; therefore blogs should be monitored as brand images are
communicated by bloggers (Douglas and Mills 2006).
There are, however, several challenges and issues that tourism marketers should recognize and
address in using travel blogs as research data. It is noted that the use of blogs for research is
hindered by several weaknesses that were highlighted by a number of researchers:
1 issues and problems in blog sampling (Volo 2010) which may be attributed to the lack of
profi le of the blogger;
2 blogs may have few insights in understanding destination image (Wegner 2008);
3 vastness and diversity of blogs and their idiosyncratic or disorganized style of writing
(Bosangit 2010); and
4 locating and analyzing relevant content is time consuming and requires a lot of effort (Carson
2008; Schmalleger and Carso, 2008).
Volo (2010) outlined that investigators have identifi ed fi ve weaknesses in using blogs which are:
1 shortness of text in blogs;
2 the diffi culty of generalizing fi ndings due to the small sample size;
3 the issues and problems encountered in blog 'sampling';
4 little opportunity for destination marketing organizations to gather important insights from
visitors' narratives; and
5
the need for further study to assess how potential visitors interpret these stories.
