Abstract
Equipped with mobile technologies, travelers increasingly seek opportunities to encounter the real lives of the people residing in the focal destination. With this trend of pursuing local life experience, this study investigated how international visitors recognize the lives of people in the focal destination, and whether this recognition is related to satisfaction. Reviews for Teheran’s Grand Bazaar from an online review site, Tripadvisor, showed that visitors’ local encounters were linked with favorable emotions (good, interesting, and worthwhile). To lend support to the contact hypothesis, which posits that intercultural experiences can lead to more favorable evaluations of the host community; the visitors who recognized direct and indirect encounters with local life indicated higher satisfaction. Even if brief, the experience of local life appeared to create more intimate feelings for the focal destination. Interestingly, the number of past travel experiences, which was captured by the number of reviews written by the reviewer, was found to have a negative association with satisfaction. We draw further implications for the travelers as well as the local community.
Highlights
As reflected in the marketing slogan of Airbnb, “Live like a local” [1], we have seen increasing consumer interest in experiencing destinations in a more local way [2]
By definition, means leaving one’s home place for another place. It inevitably entails participating in local experiences in the focal destination
First, we explored how the local life was described by reviewers through the text analysis
Summary
As reflected in the marketing slogan of Airbnb, “Live like a local” [1], we have seen increasing consumer interest in experiencing destinations in a more local way [2]. Popular places are often crowded with other tourists; it is not always possible to meet and interact with local residents. The current trend of pursuing local experiences appears to mean that visitors seek to be involved in authentic real life of the people in the destination [4]. The purpose of this study is to examine the local experience of international visitors, focusing on their encounters with real life of people at the focal destination. By examining local life experience as provided in the consumers’ reviews and investigating its usage context and the association with satisfaction, this study fills the gap in the literature, which lacks empirical analysis into the visitors’ perceptions of the real lives of others and its relationship with satisfaction. We discuss issues of sustainability arising from the trend of pursuing local life experiences in the travel industry
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