Impact of Travel Information Search Behavior on the Image of Tanzania as a Tourist Destination

Abstract

Information has been noted to be the key to the formation of destination image. Destination marketers are aware of this fact and they aggressively try to influence the tourist’s decisions by altering the image of their destinations through information provision. During their trip planning, tourists usually engage themselves with active information search. Despite motives being the crux of travel information search, it has only been conceptually linked to the travel information sources. In this research we focus on investigating the impact of information search behavior on the destination image. A questionnaire based survey was conducted to collect data from 625 tourists in Tanzania. The data were analyzed by employing factor analysis and relevant hypotheses were derived and tested by multiple regression analysis. The results suggested that the information search behaviors have a significant influence on the destination image Differential uses of different sources of information have different impact on the destination images and the longer the travel planning horizon the stronger the destination images. These findings offer a valuable empirical insights to the marketers as to where (sources) to put travel information to cater for different tourists having different motivations with the aim of influencing the destination image in a most favorable way.