Social Media’s Influence on Tourists’ Choice of Destination

Social media are web-based communication platforms that let users communicate and exchange information with one another. It is an online communication network that facilitates online engagement, content sharing, community feedback, and collaboration. This study mainly explores how vital social media is in influencing the tourists’ choice of destination. The study aims to assess tourists’ social media engagement, factors affecting reliance on it for travel planning, its impact on destination choice, the correlation between social media reliance and destination choice, and propose a framework for social media’s influence on destination selection. A quantitative correlational research method was used in this study. Further, the research is a population study where all the respondents were tourism management students of Saint Mary’s University. As for the data collection method, the researchers used survey questionnaires. The results revealed that Facebook is the most popular social media network, and most respondents said they used TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram for more than five hours each, while tourists spent less than 1 hour on Pinterest. Additionally, most of the respondents rely on social media to provide them with information about new travel locations. Images of popular tourist sites shared on social media platforms indicate the amount to which social media influences their destination selections. As a result, the two variables had a significant relationship, implying that tourists’ extensive reliance on social media for travel-related information also has a significant impact on the destinations tourists choose. Moreover, as illustrated in the framework created by the researchers, the social media that the respondents utilized, their reliance on social media for travel information, and social media’s influence on decision-making are all interrelated to travel planning.