The effects of online social media on tourism websites
Web 2.0 and online social networking websites heavily affect today most of the online activities and their effect on tourism is obviously rather important. This paper aims at verifying the impact that online social networks (OSN) have on the popularity of
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Abstract Web 2.0 and online social networking websites heavily affect today most of the online activities and their effect on tourism is obviously rather important. This paper aims at verifying the impact that online social networks (OSN) have on the popularity of tourism websites. Two OSNs have been considered: Facebook and Twitter. The pattern of visits to a sample of Italian tourism websites was analysed and the relationship between the total visits and those having the OSNs as referrals were measured. The analysis shows a clear correlation and confirms the starting hypothesis. Consequences and implications ofthese outcomes are discussed. Keywords: Web 2.0; Travel 2.0; online social networks; tourism websites; Facebook; Twitter.
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Introduction
At the close of the 20th century - roughly between 1997 and 2000 - a set of hardware and software technologies collectively known as the Internet had an enormous diffusion and radically changed most of our economic and social life. In the last few years a further "revolution" has impacted the way we communicate, work and conduct business. The buzzword for this is Web 2.0. Not really a technological advancement, since it relies on well developed and known tools, Web 2.0 rather identifies the changes occurred in the ways software developers and people make and use the Web. The applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, collaboration and formation of virtual communities form today a large part of cybernauts' daily activities and may be seen as a natural development of the original Berners-Lee's idea of "a collaborative medium, a place where we all [could} meet and read and write" (quoted in Richardson, 2006: 1).
R. Law et al. (eds.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2011 © Springer-Verlag/Wien 2011
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Obviously, as it happened for the first Internet revolution, Web 2.0 could not remain unnoticed in activities genetically bound to the human species such as travel. The impact of Web 2.0 on tourism has been (and is) quite important as numerous publications, scholarly and not, continue to state. Most of the analyses conducted so far assess the behaviour, the usage and the effects Travel 2.0 (the touristic version of Web 2.0) has as an important set of tools in the hands of a tourist and how it affects the image and the business of destinations, companies and organisations. Moreover, the adoption of such tools is considered to be quite important for improving the status of tourism websites. This generates the hypothesis that the role of OSNs in rising the number of visitors to referenced websites is significant. Aim of this paper is to verify this impact. Two OSNs have been considered: Facebook and Twitter. The pattern of visits to a sample of Italian tourism websites has been analysed and the relationship between the total visits and those having the two OSNs as referrals have been measured. The rest of this paper is organised as follows. Section 2 briefly surveys the role of Travel 2.0 and OSNs. Section 3 describes the methods used
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