A Tourists’ Perspective on the Usage Benefits of Tourism Social Media

With the proliferation of social media, more and more tourists come to adopt a range of social media to plan their tourism projects and acquire travel experience. Despite the tourism enterprises’ growing enthusiasm about travelling social media, yet little is presently known about the relevant usage benefits determining the usage for the specific purpose of travel planning and travel experience sharing. This study devised 19 usage benefits indicators from the perspective of tourists. We collected data using surveys and employed the analytic hierarchy process method (AHP) to sort the importance of these indicators. The results show that the benefit of real time communication is a dominant benefit. Specifically, information preservation, information disclosure to enhance the transparency and personal reputation promotion are the three important benefits by using tourism social media.