What is Travel Experience

The way tourism consumers share travel experiences have changed tremendously in recent years. There is increased use of technology to distribute travel experiences via social networking sites. Travel companies are increasingly developing their websites in order to network with their tourism customers. These network sites play a significant role in receiving customer feedback using online reviews. As a result, travel companies can utilize their customer evaluations to improve products and service offerings. The visual images and textual postings on network sites have the power to motivate others to embark on travel. This chapter is about peer influence mechanisms behind travel experience sharing on the social network sites. It uses both phenomenology and ethnographic methodological approaches to analyze some of the comments and photographs posted on SNSs by tourists in Malawi. It concludes that most of the tourists traveling to Malawi were influenced by what is being shared on social network sites, yet others do visit out of curiosity to discovering new things.