Travel Blogs Research Articles

The Effect of Travel Blog Quality on User Satisfaction and Intention to Revisit

The Effect of Travel Blog Quality on User Satisfaction and Intention to Revisit

Developing a Scale to Measure Tourist Perceived Safety

Safety for tourists at places visited is essential to their enjoyment and experiences, as well as a determinant of destination success. Yet, little attention has been paid to the conceptualization and scale development for tourist perceived safety at destinations (TPSD). The primary purpose of this research was to identify the dimensions of TPSD and develop a scale for measuring it based on safety system theory. A three-stage study in a mixed-method design was conducted to develop and validate TPSD. Stage 1 identified the dimensions and initial items of TPSD through extensive literature reviewing and content analysis of travel blogs. In stage 2 (n = 300), an explanatory factor analysis was conducted to refine and validate the preliminary items. Stage 3 (n = 1,830) provided empirical support for a 20-item, five-dimension (human, facility and equipment, natural environment, social environment, management) TPSD scale through confirmatory factor analysis.

BORACAY ISLAND DESTINATION IMAGE THROUGH TRAVEL BLOGS

Destination images are important information for marketing professionals, local planners, and travel bloggers on social media. The rise of social media has allowed more tourists to share their knowledge, emotions, and experiences from their travels. However, despite the popularity of adapting online narratives to destination images, little or no qualitative analysis has been conducted about island’s sustainable tourism development in the Philippines using information from social media. One type of destination are small islands in the Philippines. The examination is worthwhile inasmuch as the literature has been silent on destination images of top island retreats in the country, although there are many negative images of overcrowded and unsustainable resorts posted by both international and local tourists. Method of this research are using data from 83 travel blogs written from January 2013 to February 2018by visitors of Boracay, the current study extracts underlying themes and subthemes relating to visitors’ overall impressions, cultural exchanges, economic development, and environmental changes. It was determined that tourists are interested in the white beaches, breathtaking landscapes, and varieties of activities offered, such as island-hopping and “mermaiding.” There is also evidence that Boracay continues to face issues concerning its sustainability, such as threats on its unfortunate transportation system, losing its cultural identity, uncontrolled urbanization, and unsustainable solid waste management practices. The findings here are useful for local government, small island tourism planners, and service providers in understanding visitor perceptions of quality and value, which in turn have influenced the island’s competitiveness and sustainability.

The Worldmaking Agency of the Sri Lankan Travel Blogger

This article presents a scrutiny of the powerful "worldmaking" role performed by English language travel writers in the context of Sri Lanka. It critically positions travel representations as a crucial means of knowledge production that shapes the way Sri Lanka is known and experienced. In that, it examines an emerging version of the country produced by young Sri Lankan travel bloggers through their employment of an "activist gaze" alongside the use of a "promotional gaze" by professional tourism writers. The article illuminates each of these distinctive worldmaking roles; the latter engaging the authority of tourism in constructing/perpetuating a particular favored version of the country to persuade the global tourist, and the former's "aware" agency in constructing a potential or alternative representation distinctive from the first. However, surpassing an exploration of representations and their worldmaking power, the article sheds light on the way writers are inculcated into certain standpoints and their negotiation of these through the employment of the Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, capital, and field. As such, it innovatively combines structure and agency in the study of tourism representations, unveiling the social implications underlying worldmaking and thereby elucidating the critical link between the English language, travel writing and social class in an understudied postcolonial context of South Asia.

Travel Blog as an ESL Teaching Tool

Current stage of ICT development necessitates the improvement of teaching tools, skills, and learning outcomes. The article discusses bright educational prospects of travel blogging for students of English as a second language (ESL). The authors suggest a short theoretical overview of research into travel blogosphere’s educational opportunities, while discussing a classification of travel blogs according to the type of sender vs receiver communication. On a wide and modern textual material the article considers such prominent features of travel storytelling as polysemantic vocabulary, compact meaning representation, strategies to present cultural information and verbal creativity which can be of true interest for students of B2 level and above. The readers can also learn about a few forms of activity with travel stories which are individual special sampling with some specific focus (pun, irony, creative instances of word building), presentation of foreign culture by means of English, project work for a small group of enthusiasts, sampling stories by country, by area or by activity, and presenting one concise story to the classroom, as their own post or a paper brochure.

GTMapLens: Interactive Lens for Geo‐Text Data Browsing on Map

AbstractData containing geospatial semantics, such as geotagged tweets, travel blogs, and crime reports, associates natural language texts with geographical locations. This paper presents a lens‐based visual interaction technique, GTMapLens, to flexibly browse the geo‐text data on a map. It allows users to perform dynamic focus+context exploration by using movable lenses to browse geographical regions, find locations of interest, and perform comparative and drill‐down studies. Geo‐text data is visualized in a way that users can easily perceive the underlying geospatial semantics along with lens moving. Based on a requirement analysis with a cohort of multidisciplinary domain experts, a set of lens interaction techniques are developed including keywords control, path management, context visualization, and snapshot anchors. They allow users to achieve a guided and controllable exploration of geo‐text data. A hierarchical data model enables the interactive lens operations by accelerated data retrieval from a geo‐text database. Evaluation with real‐world datasets is presented to show the usability and effectiveness of GTMapLens.

The Guimi Holidays of Young Chinese Women: Evidence from Cyber Communities

ABSTRACT The phrase ‘guimi holiday’ usually refers to shared travel among female best friends. This study provides insight into guimi holiday (闺蜜游) experiences among young Chinese women. These women were mainly born in China between the 1980s and 2000s, reared under the one-child policy. Aided partly by the diffusion of the internet and guimi-related TV shows and movies, the guimi holiday has flourished in China. For this study, a qualitative methodology was employed to analyze travel blogs of guimi holidays from popular Chinese online travel communities, which revealed several elements of this holiday experience: the guimi style of bonding, pursuing ‘me and my’ authentic time, and social support. This paper concludes with some implications and recommendations for the marketing of the guimi holiday experience in the tourism industry.

Storytelling approach of the self-reported slow adventure to Tibet: Constructing experience and identity

Most of our travel experiences are stored, recorded, and relived in the form of stories; tourist blogs have emerged as a modern form of travel story. These stories provide information about exciting moments and memorable events, which are usually emotional highpoints that can be useful for tourism marketers. Based on the sociological concept of storytelling, this study investigates which aspects of the slow adventure experience travelers present in their travel blogs through a rubric elaborated on extant literature. The findings reveal three types of slow adventure stories, and each type of story relates to a different identity construction. The article concludes with a discussion of its theoretical contributions in terms of adding to the literature of adventure tourism and storytelling. In revealing the themes and identities relating to specific slow adventure experiences, it provides potential practical implications of travel blogs for slow adventure product designers and marketers.

Consuming the neighbourhood? Temporary highly skilled migrants in Montreal’s Mile End

ABSTRACT The neighbourhood of Mile End, in Montreal, Canada, is known to be a transient, multicultural hub, home to successive waves of migrants. It is internationally acclaimed in popular travel blogs and world lists of ‘hip’ neighbourhoods on the basis of indicators such as number of artists per square kilometre, café culture, and established independent shops. Yet a core of socially involved and rooted residents nurture the village-like vibe of the area. In the past decades, the eastern industrial zone of Mile End has seen a concentration of IT, gaming and film industries rise considerably, especially with the arrival of a large multinational company that brought a significant demographic of mostly affluent professional 20- and 30-something males. Local companies are recruiting temporary high-skilled migrants to respond to a growing demand for various types of designers and programmers. This paper documents the localised everyday life experience of temporary professional migrants’ in the neighbourhood. It considers migrants’ influence on the revitalisation of the area, and their the impact on the urban culture. Ethnographic data on how temporary migrants’ struggle for integration into forms of civic engagement are juxtaposed against their transnational urban lifestyles mostly defined by modes of consumption.

Communicative strategies in modern linguistics (on the material of English travel blogs)

Communicative strategies in modern linguistics (on the material of English travel blogs)

The travel blogger as digital nomad: (Re-)imagining workplace performances of digital nomadism within travel blogging work

Through analysis of empirical fieldwork conducted with British travel bloggers, this paper details a novel and significant investigation into the nuances of self-presentation and performances inherent in travel blogging work, through the lens of digital nomadism. Working with Goffman’s (The presentation of self in everyday life. Penguin, London, 1959) ideas of front and back regionalisation, the paper explores the distinct ways in which digital nomadism is performed by the travel blogger. Firstly, the paper highlights how performances of digital nomadism are integral to the successful self-presentation of the travel blogger as an aspirational worker. Next, it showcases how travel bloggers use performances of digital nomadism in the strategic complication of the front and back-stage of their work, in order to demonstrate authenticity to their audience. The paper then considers how travel bloggers undertake performances of digital nomadism, explicitly within the front-stage to aid in their overall impression management of being a travel blogger. Subsequently, the paper turns to discussions of how technology becomes utilised in performances of digital nomadism which flow across the travel blogger’s front and back-stage. Finally, the paper reviews how, through performances of digital nomadism, the travel blogger appropriates their own back-stage leading to issues of overwork and precarity. The paper’s original contribution lies in its use of the lens of digital nomadism to enable us to explore and reimagine the workplace performances of travel bloggers. In doing so, the paper is able to speculate on the nuances and motivations implicit in these performances, digging deeper into issues of online self-presentation, authenticity and place.

Negotiation Strategies and Constraints For Solo Female Travelers in Africa

This article presents constraints of solo female travelers to Africa based on their blogs reflecting their pretravel and during-travel constraints and the negotiations they adopted to energize their desire to travel to and within African countries. The study employs netnographic research methodology to understand complex social phenomena and assist researchers in developing themes from female travel bloggers' experiences of solo travels to Africa. Using content analysis, the findings show that the constraints were mainly interpersonal, external, as well as intrapersonal. Family, friends, and the media presented solo women travelers with these constraints about Africa, which is perceived as a socially constructed "men's space." The study finds that despite these constraints, the bloggers felt adventurous and were satisfied with their African experience.

Traveler-facing technology in the tourism experience: a historical perspective

ABSTRACT This study investigated how travelers use of technology changed the travel experience over time. To accomplish this, a qualitative thematic analysis of travel blogs from the past 46 years was conducted. Two key findings emerged. First, technology was shown to influence three overarching aspects of the tourism experience. Secondly, the impact of technology on the tourism experience fluctuated greatly across the previous five decades. These findings present several theoretical contributions which delineate the historical relationship between technology and travelers. As a result, this study also offers insight for how technology and tourism experiences may unfold in the near future.

Let's travel: Voices from the millennial female Muslim travellers

AbstractThe main aim of this study was to examine the content of the travel blogs of millennial female Muslim travellers and understand the meanings and directives in such writing. The theoretical framework of critical media discourse analysis was used to frame the study, while Leximancer and content analysis were used to analyse data. Key results extended beyond specifying the need for halal food and included supporting female travel, and specifying quite specific Muslim‐friendly requirements. Further, the desire to reduce negative stereotypes of Islam was identified and advocacy that Muslim women seize travel opportunities was highlighted.

Adventurous Arctic encounters? Exploring Chinese adventure tourism

ABSTRACTWhile Greenland prepares itself to get “China ready” and Visit Greenland is increasingly gearing its offerings towards adventure tourists, this article examines the Chinese adventure market to Greenland. We first explore China-directed activities at the destination such as B2B trade development, product development and marketing training support for tourism operators. The article then compares these activities through social listening to needs and wants of Chinese travelers to Greenland, as expressed in travel blogs on the platform Mafengwo. The concerns voiced by Chinese travelers show how adventure tourism is understood and addressed differently at the destination and by Chinese tourists. By showing how local tourism actors see Chinese tourists and reversely, how Chinese tourists view and negotiate Greenland as a tourist destination, we argue for a more dynamic understanding of Chinese adventure tourism to Greenland to seize changes and opportunities within the Chinese market. Especially in light of new international airports, this conversation, we argue, is of vital importance to work with this market in a sustainable manner. In conclusion, the article sketches possible trajectories towards the development of more culturally sensitive tourism.

How do Chinese travelers experience the Arctic? Insights from a hedonic and eudaimonic perspective

ABSTRACTThis study explores the tourism experience of Chinese independent travelers in the Arctic region from the perspective of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. We examine 12 “informant, influential and interactive” online travel blogs on Qyer.com, the biggest virtual community for Chinese outbound independent travelers. A three-level manual coding process of qualitative data has shown that hedonic Arctic experiences include “gazing at otherness”, “encounter and interaction”, “immersion in the local community”, “bodily feelings”, and “positive affects”. From eudaimonic perspective, visitors “experience challenges” (environmental, physical, and mental) at first, but they learn to “build capacities” and respond to these challenges. After conquering self-limits, Chinese travelers go through “revitalization of the body”, obtain “high spirits” and achieve “enrichment of the mind”. Some of the experiential outcomes can be explained by traditional Chinese value orientations such as self-cultivation, collectivism, and human–environment harmony. The authors recommend Arctic tourism to be positioned as a highly valued, exotic, and extraordinary destination for independent travelers who aim to enrich their mind and soul above material pleasure.

Group pooling for deep tourism demand forecasting

Advances in tourism demand forecasting immensely benefit tourism and other sectors, such as economic and resource management studies. However, even for novel AI-based methodologies, the challenge of limited available data causing model overfitting and high complexity in forecasting models remains a major problem. This study proposes a novel group-pooling-based deep-learning model (GP–DLM) to address these problems and improve model accuracy. Specifically, with our group-pooling method, we advance the tourism forecasting literature with the following findings. First, GP–DLM provides superior accuracy in comparison with benchmark models. Second, we define the novel dynamic time warping (DTW) clustering quantitative approach. Third, we reveal cross-region factors that influence travel demands of the studied regions, including “travel blog,” “best food,” and “Air Asia.”

Understanding Tourism Information Sources: Textual Communication, Efficiency, and Information Gaps

This study compares the contents of different online tourism information sources. In addition to developing a quantitative linguistic framework for comparing heterogeneous tourism information sources, a case study of the city of Barcelona in Chinese sources is presented. To understand the structural characteristics of textual communication, efficiency, and information gaps, this research examines texts not only from the websites of the Barcelona Tourism Office (local DMO) and a set of Mainland Chinese travel agencies, but also from Chinese online travel guidebooks and Chinese travel blogs. The findings reveal that the local DMO website texts are, overall, lower in lexical density and keyword density while higher in entropy. Chinese travel agency texts have lower entropy values while keyword and lexical densities are higher. Travel blogs are the most diverse and richest sources. The results explain the easiness of comprehension as well as the concentration, distribution, and repetition of information among the different sources. The findings also identify descriptive– subjective and procedural–propositional knowledge as the main semantic dimensions that affect the information gaps. Lastly, theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.

Understanding Chinese girlfriend getaways: an interdependence perspective

The Chinese word guimi refers to a female's best same-sex friend. The guimi holiday of Chinese women, as a sub-segment of girlfriend getaways, has not yet been well addressed in the existing literature. This study extends interdependence theory, a social psychological theoretical framework for examining dyads and small groups, to the study of Chinese female tourists undertaking girlfriend getaways. The findings from 35 travel blogs reveal that Chinese girlfriend getaways demonstrate two types of power relations: power over and power to. The blogs exemplify four types of mutual dependence: skill, time, knowledge, and psychological dependence; as well as three types of conflict: cognitive, process-related, and relationship-related conflict.

A Study of Interactional Metadiscourse in English Travel Blogs

With the development of tourism industry in internet plus era, travel blogs have become the main form of travel recording. Regarded as a valid device to intrude readers and to construct interaction between the writers and their readers, interactional metadiscourse is adopted widely. The study builds a corpus which consists of 30 English travel blogs. By calculating the occurrences and analyzing the functions of interactional metadiscourse, the study chooses qualitative and quantitative analysis to indicate how blogger writers communicate with the readers within narrative travel blogs and how they influence the reader’s future travel experience by using typical interactional metadiscourse.