ABSTRACT
The tourism industry has addressed the importance of social media in tourist experience. This is based on the belief that social media can act as an interaction platform between destinations and travelers that creates tourists’ empowerment. As social media have a great impact on tourists’ decision-making process, the role of the platform in tourist experience becomes more important. However, there is a lack of understanding about how social media change the dynamics of tourist experience and how travelers’ participation in the platform co-creates value. Recent tourism studies indicate that travelers’ sharing activities on social media are a new type of tourist experience, which highlights the need for developing strategic tourist experience management.
This chapter aims to understand how tourist experiences are managed at a destination level. Particularly, this chapter focuses on the impact of social media and explains how interaction between destinations and tourists transforms the overall tourist experience. Therefore, the chapter adopts a value co-creation framework to illustrate an exemplary case from the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO). Using this case, the chapter emphasizes the management of tourist experiences and destination attractiveness by adopting social media-induced value co-creation. Lastly, this chapter concludes its argument by drawing strategic implications for the other tourism destinations.
