A Review of Social Network Service Researches in Tourism

With the rapid development of web 2.0, there has been increasing focus on the topic of social network service in tourism. However, the social network service research is still at the initiate stage with related issues being gradually elaborated in theories and illuminated by empirical evidence. In this paper, the author reviews related literatures in last ten years, and discusses different kinds of social network services as well as key characters and development of such services. The study reveals that social network service seriously affects today most of the online activities and its effect on tourism is obviously important. Social network service has altered destination branding and tourism marketing greatly. In addition, social network sites also change the way of tourism information searching and show great impacts on tourism consumer behaviors. In this article, the author compares the difference research methodology and focus between Chinese scholars and foreign scholars. At the end, this author discusses the future research directions.