Social Media and Networking

Evolutionary changes to the Internet and advances in how we communicate have had a significant impact on the tourism industry in recent years. Originally, Internet users had access to information online in a “read-only” format. Tourism marketing therefore relied solely on the one-way direction of information from suppliers to consumers. However, the arrival of the second generation of the World Wide Web known as Web 2.0 in the early 2000s transformed the processes of information composition, communication, and dissemination online.

Today, the Internet is very much an arena of participation, with user-generated content (UGC) occupying an increasingly prominent position within online information exchange. UGC (also referred to as consumer-generated media or user-created content) can be understood as data or media that Internet users compose and contribute ...