Segmenting social media users in international tourism: Insights integrated from multi-homing theory and international visitor survey data

Abstract

This study utilizes multi-homing theory to assess international travelers' usage of social media platforms, revealing insights into their gender, country of origin, generation cohorts, and travel purposes. These insights can guide the development of effective social media marketing strategies for national destination management organizations (DMOs). Data from South Korea's 2019 International Visitor Survey (with 12,194 participants) was analyzed using chi-square and correspondence analysis techniques. The results revealed distinctive preferences of international visitors among generational cohorts with different travel purposes across 19 countries in the usage of online travel communities, social network platforms, video-sharing platforms, and travel blogs. Understanding the dynamics of social media platforms helps national DMOs enhance their social media marketing strategies for international visitors, based on the multi-sided platform usage paradigm. Nevertheless, acknowledging the study's limitations points towards potential avenues for future research.