The role of social media travel blogs and pages on youth’s traveling decisions : A comparative cross-cultural study between Egypt and Norway /

Abstract

The youth now consider travel to be fundamental to their lives. They do not just travel for fun and escape; they also do it to see the world and encounter different cultures. The traveler's journey has changed since the development of the Internet and social media from what it formerly was; it is no longer necessary to rely on professionally edited guidebooks or even paper charts to reroute to the most recent location. Instead, tourists now benefit from quick access to information on the Internet. Travelers nowadays approach trip-planning differently, from initial inspiration to actual booking, because of the real-time access to useful information that is frequently crowdsourced. Additionally, travelers have started following influencers and travel bloggers to gain travel and vacation inspiration. Hence, this study aims to detect and analyze the role of Instagram travel blogs and Facebook travel pages on the youth’s traveling decisions consideration through comparing Egypt and Norway as two different cultures in terms of their response to the travel posts they get exposed to on social media whether for inspiration or information gathering. This study applies the reader-response theory and uses qualitative and quantitative methodologies for rich information gathering. The results showed a positive and statistically significant correlation between using travel blogs as a source of information or inspiration and travel decision-making considerations. However, Egyptians are more likely to be affected by travel blogs as a source of information than Norwegians. On the other hand, it was found that both Egyptians and Norwegians were likely equal in the way they were affected by travel blogs as a source of inspiration. A deeper investigation of different cultural dimensions models is recommended to explain the diversity among cultures.