The internet is increasingly adopted to plan tourism trips, being used to consult various information sources and search different types of information. However, previous research does not provide an in-depth perspective of the role of Internet in the pre-trip stage. The main objective of this chapter is to understand the role of the internet in the pre-trip stage, the type of sources consulted, and information searched, as well as how this search is affected by sociodemographic characteristics, daily hours using the internet, and travel behavior. A questionnaire survey was carried out (N=299), administered face-to-face and online, to people living in Portugal who made a leisure trip of three or more nights in the last three years. Descriptive analyses, t tests, and correlations were performed. Results are relevant to support the decision making of tourism organizations when conveying information on the internet and in providing appropriate services to each target market.
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The development of the Internet has brought transformations to the tourism sector (Buhalis & Law, 2008) and changes in travelers’ behavior (Amaro & Duarte, 2015; Gretzel & Fesenmaier, 2009). Nowadays, the visitors are more knowledgeable, demanding, independent, and play a more active and intervening role in all phases of the trip. The Internet is increasingly adopted to plan tourism trips, being used as an information source, helping visitors to search for different types of information in various platforms. However, previous studies on pre-trip search using the Internet do not enable too deeply understand this process, either because they are confined to very few information sources (e.g., Jensen & Hjalager, 2013; Tan & Chen, 2012) or even only one (e.g., Souza & Machado, 2017; Xiang & Gretzel, 2010), or because, among other issues, there is scarce research analyzing factors that influence this process.
Therefore, the aim of the present chapter is to understand the role of Internet in the pre-trip phase, namely how tourists use the Internet to collect information, the type of information they search and which technological platforms they use for this purpose.
To carry out the present study, a quantitative methodology was used. For data collection, a questionnaire survey was carried out, structured in three parts concerning the following three aspects – use of the Internet before tourism trips, characteristics of the tourism trips undertaken and sociodemographic characteristics. The population under analysis corresponds to people living in Portugal, with 18 years old or older, who made a leisure trip, not to visit friends or family, with the duration of 3 or more nights in the last three years. Being impossible to identify and survey all the population, a convenience sampling approach was used. The survey was administered face-to-face between May and June 2022, and a total of 299 responses were obtained. The data were analyzed using the SPSS version 26.0. Univariate and bivariate analyses were used to analyze the data.
The results obtained in the study are important to know the consumers in tourism and their search behavior on the Internet. This information may be very relevant to support the decision making of tourism organizations when conveying information on the Internet and in providing appropriate and attractive services to each target market.