Social media and tourism : Log on! The whole world gets to know what I think,but what do the tourist actors think?

The purpose with this study is to enlighten and discuss the information and communication which is spreading through social media, about the tourist operators and also to examine the operators view on social media. Social media can be described as a tool to use word of mouth on the Internet. To make this possible, five actors involved in tourism were picked on Gotland and interviewed for a content analysis. The results showed that the use of social media as an information channel before the consumer buys a trip, has increased. The study also shows that the selected actors have a lot of work to do, before they understand how to use the social media in their best interest for further developing their companies. But as an overall result we can conclude that “word of mouth” is the most desired information for both producers and consumers, especially the positive “word of mouth”, from the producer’s prospect of view. Social media contributes for the possibility to make the information available for more people in a faster way