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This study aims to examine the demographic differences of Chinese nationals’ travel experience sharing through different offline and online platforms.

Cross-tabulation analysis was applied on a national sample of 6081 respondents in China.

The study found that Chinese women tend to share travel experience more often than Chinese men; old people in China tend to use the face-to-face approach more than online or social media to share their travel experience. About 66.5 per cent of the survey sample used WeChat Moments to share their travel experience, highlighting WeChat as the dominating social media platform in China for travel sharing. In general, people who share via online platforms (WeChat, Weibo, QQ Space) tend to be young, single or unmarried, well-educated and earning a high monthly income.

The study offers an in-depth understanding of travel experience sharing idiosyncrasies in China.

For most customers, the vacation experience is enjoyed in the company of others; thus, studying customer-to-customer interactions becomes critical. This research aims to explore customer-to-customer interactions and their impact on the guest experience.

An ethnographic approach was taken to study a tour group over the course of two weeks. The author was a covert researcher and a member of the touring group.

Individuals gained social status both among fellow travelers and also among friends and family by virtue of their travels, the stories told, pictures shared and social media postings. The group became highly cohesive in a short time span, which led to an “in” and “out” group dynamic. Informants were more prone to take risks, owing to both their status as travelers and the group dynamics. The consumption of alcohol was observed along with its positive and negative effects. It was also noted that group members influenced one another during the process of assigning gratuities to the tour guide.

The marketing of hospitality and tourism services can stress benefits that go beyond one single vacation. Companies can engage in more vigorous efforts to facilitate positive customer-to-customer interactions to enhance the guest experience. Finally, given the speed of group processes and formation of a cohesive environment, organizations should be vigilant of how both employees and customers interact in the early stages of group development.

Even though mature travelers have been the subject of much research attention, the interactions, habits and influence of young travelers in the literature is underrepresented. Furthermore, the present research challenges the previously held assumption that services are simultaneously produced and consumed. Using pictures, social media posting and stories, informants recall and continue to experience benefits from their vacation.

Building on a small body of work, the authors' study aims to investigate some important antecedents of online review characteristics in the Chinese restaurant industry.

Using a data set of restaurant reviews collected from a most popular review platform in China, the authors conduct a series of analyses to examine the influence of travel experience and travel distance on travelers' review characteristics in terms of review rating and media richness. The moderating effect of restaurant price on the influence is also investigated.

Travelers with a longer travel distance and more travel experience tend to provide higher and lower online ratings, respectively, which can be explained by the construal level theory (CLT) and the expectation-confirmation theory (ECT), respectively. Furthermore, these strong feelings can then induce travelers to post enriched reviews with more pictures, more words and more affective words to release consumption tension. Besides, restaurant price can moderate these relationships.

Distinguished from most studies which mainly focus on the consequences of online review characteristics or antecedents of review helpfulness, the authors pay attention to the effects of travelers' individual differences in terms of travel distance and travel experience on travelers' online reviewing behavior. In addition to review rating, the authors also focus on media richness in terms of visual and textual information. The authors' research findings can benefit restaurant consumers and managers for their online word-of-mouth utilization and management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore domestic experiential travel by Chinese millennials, a group of consumers who will increasingly influence the global travel and tourism industry.

A qualitative research method was adopted to explore motivations and memorable experiences of Chinese millennials who successfully mountain biked the Qinghai–Tibet Highway in China.

For Chinese millennial mountain bikers in Tibet, experiential travel motivations and experiences are important. During the trip, they challenged their mental and physical abilities, enjoyed nature, bonded with friends and perceived a warm welcome by Tibetan families. This study adds to existing knowledge on experiential travel, as it was found that transformation was perceived as important outcome of the trip. Participants perceived personal change in attitude and behaviour, which will help them face everyday life challenges.

Further research could focus on gaining insight into other types of Chinese adventure tourists, on comparing wishes and demands of Chinese with other mountain bikers and on developments in transformative travel.

Adventure tourism organisations could adjust their tourism product range to cater more for Chinese millennials who aim to improve their physical and mental skills.

In-depth research into motivations and experiences of Chinese millennials is scarce. The influence of Chinese millennials on the tourism market is already large and will continue to increase.

This paper aims to examine the effects of travel experience dimensions on tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty.

Data were collected from 457 international tourists visiting Phuket through a convenience sampling method. The structural equation modeling approach by AMOS was used to test the effects.

In case of island destination, beach attraction is not the only factor contributing to tourists’ loyalty, but hospitality of local people also plays an essential component to retain loyal tourists.

This study examined only one construct (i.e. travel experience) affecting tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty.

Tourist experience in beach attractions and local people are the key factors to retain royal tourists.

Quality of beaches and friendliness of local people are important factors to promote island tourism.

Two key factors of tourist experience were found to affect tourists’ loyalty in the case of island destination: beach attractions and local people.

Virtual reality (VR) technology is a potential tool for tourism marketers to maintain the attractiveness of their destinations and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the effectiveness of VR technology in motivating potential tourists' visit intention under lockdown conditions remains unknown. An integrated model based on the experience economy framework and mood management theory was, therefore, used to explain how tourists' VR experiences affect their mood management processes and subsequent behaviors. This research also examined how perceived travel risk influenced the relationship between mood management processes and future decisions.

This study used a cross-sectional design based on a sample collected from a Chinese survey company, Sojump. The author surveyed 285 respondents who had experienced VR tourism activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research model was tested using partial least squares–structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrated that the four dimensions of VR experiences differently affected mood management processes, while perceived travel risk differently moderated the influence of mood management processes on visit intention and VR stickiness. This provides insights for tourism marketers to adapt to the current tourism environment and develop recovery strategies.

In response to gaps in the literature, this research examined the effectiveness of VR technology in driving tourists' visit intention during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing insights for tourism marketers to successfully implement VR tourism and plan timely recovery strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse factors influencing the propensity to share travel experiences in social media during a trip, across a sample of Millennial and Generation Z consumers in three different countries.

An online survey was sent to consumers between 16 and 30 years in Sweden, UK and India. Structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis was conducted to compare results between countries and generations.

Young travellers’ need for uniqueness (NFU) and opinion leadership (OL) with regard to travel tends to increase their propensity to share travel experiences in social media during a trip. Reflected appraisal of self is strongly related to NFU and OL and may therefore indirectly influence the propensity to share. Some differences were found between generations and countries.

Future research could consider comparisons between travellers from younger and older generations. The hypotheses formulated in this study could be tested in other countries. Further adaptions or extensions of existing NFU scales to fit in the travel and tourism context are suggested.

Millennial and Gen Z consumers will constitute an increasing part of travellers and visitors in the future. Through a better understanding of their behaviour, tourism managers can design strategies to engage them and increase electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).

This study contributes by addressing the lack of research on “self”-related drivers of eWOM in general social media during the trip, and by providing an international perspective through cross-cultural comparisons.

This research paper aims to explore Airbnb’s online experience initiative, which has sparked a new wave of virtual tourism to improvise a large assortment of experiential activities through cyberspace. It works to answer questions pertinent to the type of virtual experiences tourists seek and how these experiences could fulfill tourist needs, thereby rendering favorable socio-mental outcomes through experiences encountered.

Drawing on travel experience and transformative tourism theoretical tenets, this qualitative inquiry used data collected from social media posts from virtual tourists.

Results reveal four major themes of online experiences – hedonism, attention restoration, social relatedness and self-exaltation – that encompass 12 experiential categories. They further underscore four types of transformative mechanisms pinpointing hedonic well-being, environmental-mastery well-being, social well-being and eudaimonic well-being.

Research findings demonstrate how Airbnb exercised marketing agility during severe environmental plight; while expediting strategic initiatives that offer tourists and residents alike a means to reengage in leisure and travel activities at home. They also salvage the peer-to-peer community by turning accommodation hosts into online experience ambassadors.

The contribution of this inquiry lies in assessing virtual experiences and reconnecting how different cyber experiences can meet an array of tourist needs. This study further highlights the transformative virtual experience paradigm to lay the necessary theoretical foundation for future research on virtual transformative tourism. This research goes beyond the common understanding of transformative tourism that relies merely on corporeal encounters. From a practical point of view, this study brings light to a novel concept – sharing experience economy – that incorporates the nuances between sharing economy and experience economy.

This paper aims to examine the impact of other group members on the travel experiences of Chinese tourists participating in domestic package tours.

Based on the critical incident technique, usable responses were obtained from 253 tourists regarding the influence of other group members on their travel experiences in the same group package tour (GPT).

The results show that the travel experiences of Chinese tourists on a domestic package tour are affected by three general factors, namely, appearance, behaviors, and language of other group members.

This research mainly involves samples of young tourists. The findings may not be able to generalize to elderly tourists. Future studies may involve samples from various age cohorts.

The findings offer new insights and directions for GPT operators and tour guides to improve tourism management and tourist experiences.

This study contributes to tourism literature about customer-to-customer interaction by identifying the major categories of other customers’ characteristics or behaviors that may positively or negatively influence a GPT tourist’s travel experience.

This study enriches the existing literature by investigating the attributes of other group members that may affect the travel experiences of a domestic GPT participant. Tourism firms can formulate better strategies and staff training to enhance tourists’ travel experiences.

This paper aims to identify the most popular travel information sources used among tourists and investigates how travel information selection differs across travel experience and gender.

This study used convenient and quota sampling strategy, questionnaires were distributed to 270 respondents at Sultanahmet and Grand Bazaar areas. A screening question was used to classify respondents.

First, past travel experience, travel agent, travel websites and hotel websites are generally the most frequently used travel information sources in destination selection due to conveniences and reliability. Second, first-timers prefer to use external information sources such as Facebook, guidebooks, travel agents and newspapers to gather information about destinations, whereas repeat visitors prefer to use internal information sources such as friends’ suggestions and past travel experience. Lastly, female visitors rely more on internal information sources such as friends’ suggestions and past travel experience. However, males prefer to use external information sources like Facebook, television, blog, travel agents, newspaper and guidebooks in choosing Turkey as a destination.

Because factors studied, travel information sources selected, number of respondents and questionnaire distribution area are limited, future studies can expand to a bigger area so more respondents could get more reliable results.

This paper could help tourism industries understand searching behaviours among different types of tourists better to promote businesses in convenient sources and reach target customers easily.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how travel information searching behaviours differ among tourists.