A multiphase trip, diversified digital and varied background approach to analysing and segmenting holidaymakers and their use of social media

Abstract

The need for an investigation into internet usage, focusing specifically on social media, which integrates actual consumer behaviour before and during a tourist visit, as well as predispositions at the destination, motivates the current research work. With this aim in mind, digital tourist segmentation has been developed by combining different doctrines and distinguishing two categories of variables: firstly, the digital characteristics for describing the segments, integrating a broad range of electronic applications within a multiphase approach, and secondly, the non-digital variables to profile the segments and provide the circumstances of the stay, in addition to sociodemographic features. A questionnaire was given to 346 subjects, picked at convenience with proportional stratification at their holiday accommodation in Gran Canaria in 2015. A list of devices, social media, and websites – items within scale classification questions – are used as exhaustive measuring instruments. Empirical analysis of the responses of tourists not only at their country of origin but also at their destination – carried out by a K-Means procedure — obtained a digital segmentation. Three homogeneous groups, whose digital responses are quite different and clearly described in terms of their socio-demographic background and the circumstances of their stay, are labelled 'Social Media Enthusiast Users', 'Social Media Users' and 'Non/Limited Users'. On this basis, the practical implications integrate not only the offline and online responses - entailing a large variety of applications – but also consumer behaviour and predisposition before and during a tourist visit, so that a multi-fold segmentation strategy for the tourist destination is proposed.