Assessing the influence of social media on tourists´ motivations and image formation of a destination

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to analyse how tourists form the cognitive, affective and unique images of a tourism destination, taking into account that: travellers use user-generated content (UGC) as one of the more important sources of information about the destination, sources of information influence on travellers’ motivation to visit some destination and motivations influence on the dimensions of the destination image. Design/methodology/approach – Taking into account the works of Beerli and Martin (2004), Seabra et al. (2007) and Qu et al. (2011), this paper proposes an integrative model that shows how different types of information sources influence on individuals’ motivations, as well as the different dimensions of the image of the tourist destination are influenced by tourists’ motivations. Moreover, the design and validation of new scales of measures, adapted to the new tourist profile 2.0, is proposed. The model is empirical tested by analysis of 541 national and international tourists...