Tourists' use and evaluation of travel information sources

This exploratory study probes the travel information system from tourist's point of view. A pilot study was conducted to devise a survey questionnaire and an instrument, utilizing the semantic differential technique, to measure credibility attributed to travel information sources. The questionnaire and instrument were mailed to a non-probability sample of two groups of tourists, one consisting of guests at a resort and the other composed of visitors to a state. Data were obtained by the tourists' socio-economic characteristics, their travel behavior, and their use of ten categories of travel information sources along with their response to the measure of credibility of the source categories. The chi-square test for independence was applied to determine if any interactions could be assumed to exist between the number of travel information source categories used and selected variables from both the socio-economic and travel behavior data sets for each respondent group. Respondents' general familiarity with travel information was found to be related only to the age of males among the state visitors. The number of source categories used on the subject trip was found to be related to the length of time spent in trip planning among both groups. Prior experience with the destination and length of trip were related to trip information use only among the state visitors