Shared experience in pretrip and experience sharing in posttrip: A survey of Airbnb users

Drawing conclusions on how firms should manage the flow of travelers’ experience information and design smart tourism platforms is drawn.

Abstract

This research focuses on travelers' use of shared experiences during their pretrip decision-making and their posttrip behavior in sharing their experiences. On the basis of information processing and literature on experience sharing, we developed hypotheses on how travelers make their purchase decisions on a smart tourism platform, adopting the experiences shared by others (pretrip), and how the quality of their travel experience and perceived information discrepancy affected their behavior in sharing their experience (posttrip). By testing these hypotheses using survey data from 411 Korean users of Airbnb, we draw conclusions on how firms should manage the flow of travelers' experience information and design smart tourism platforms.