THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS IN TRAVEL DECISIONS

Abstract

Social networks are not the same as they were 10 years ago. Now, in addition
to the role of "socialization", their basic role, marketing has also intervened.
Marketing can be defined as the art of identifying and satisfying customer needs
while producing profit. Nowadays, through social media marketing, a company
can promote itself or present products and services very easily, while being able to
target exactly the desired people, which translates into making more profit. Our
paper provides arguments on the influence of social media in travel decisions,
and it’s based on a study of consumer behaviour in this field. The study began
from our interest in the way social networks influence our personal decision to
travel, to visit a certain area or a certain landmark, so we wanted to find out
more information about how this "hypnosis" works. The main hypothesis of the
study was that people are influenced by social networks in their travel decisions
and according to the results, the hypothesis was confirmed. 91.35% of the total
participants in the study were tempted to travel because of a photo seen on a
social network, therefore, a good social marketing campaign could really make a
difference in travel decisions.