Influence of Social Media on Choosing Tourist Destination: A Study Based on Sydney Hospitality Industry

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Assessment 3: Research Proposal and Literature Review
Topic: Influence of social media towards choosing tourist destination: a study based on Sydney
hospitality industry
Student’s name:
Name of the university:
Author’s note:

1RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Table of Contents
Background......................................................................................................................................2
Significance.....................................................................................................................................2
Scope................................................................................................................................................3
Problem statement and objectives...................................................................................................4
Literature review..............................................................................................................................5
Influence of social media on choosing tourism destination.........................................................5
The theoretical perspective of social media influence.................................................................6
Advantages of the power of social media....................................................................................7
Challenges for tourists to use social media..................................................................................8
Reference List..................................................................................................................................9
Appendices....................................................................................................................................11

2RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Background
The advent of social media and technology has made the tourists’ journey different than
the journey used to be. Now, the journey does not rely on the travel guidebook or paper maps to
find out the latest destinations. Nowadays, tourists find the information through accessing the
internet or social media pages of TripAdvisor, Buzzfeed or the friends’ Instagram photos that
depict the experience of latest vacations. As stated by Tuten and Solomon (2017), social media
has become the place to access the real-time data from various sources about travel destinations
and the people’s approach to plan the trip has changed. Kaur (2016), supported this by saying the
path to travel a place; both experience and purchasing of the tickets, has become nonlinear. The
tourists just log in to the social media accounts and browse to the friends' co-workers and
influencers pages to find the vacation inspiration and travel log; therefore, it supports the way to
discover new destinations. In addition, Sydney has become a targeted tourist destination for
domestic and international tourists as the people do not miss the opportunity without visiting
Sydney. There are many places where the tourists want to go, such as Sydney Opera House,
Sydney Harbour Bridge, Bondi Beach and Darling Harbour. Therefore, the hospitality industry
in Sydney has been posted the images of nature and the festive activities on their social media
pages to attract the guests. Hotels share their ‘room view’ along with famous tourist spot to
attract the guests. The hospitality organisations ask the tourists to share their experience on hotel
booking e-commerce, social media and on the hotels’ websites with feedback so that other guests
take influence from these.

3RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Significance
This paper aims to examine the process of social networking sites can become the main
method for gaining the detailed and fast information for the choice of tourism destinations. This
paper would focus on the benefits of the social media promoting tourist destinations for reaching
the wider audiences in global perspectives. From this paper, the marketing and management
departments of the hospitality sector can gain knowledge about developing ad hoc marketing
tools and strategies along with benefits of competitive advantage in the industry. This research
will be significant from the latest perspective of the young generation as the new generation
spend their leisure time on social media pages and they get influenced by the images, posts,
news, information and videos shared by their peers and influencers. Therefore, the marketing
department of hospitality sectors in Sydney area must understand the importance of running
video, audio, images, text and gif across the online environment that can increase the footfall on
their hotels and resorts. Social media is now the online communication system that provides
information to negatively influence the people or to promote the places, brands, environment or
the hospitality organisations. Most importantly, the influence of social media on making choice
of a tourist destination is new and this study focuses narrowly on Sydney based hospitality
industry; therefore, secondary data are scarce. This paper will be significant to show the
importance of social media campaigning and advertisement for the hospitality industry to
influence on the tourists’ perception. The tourists can gain knowledge from this paper about the
non-formal messages on the social media and sometimes, the posts are wrong and distorted.
Scope
The demographic scope of this study are the tourists; mainly the young generation. This
study also focuses on the e-marketers who need to understand the importance of social media to