SOCIAL MEDIA USE AMONG CZECH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS DURING THE TRAVEL PROCESS

Purpose - The paper aims to determine how students, ranking among one of the important tourism market segments, use social media during the overall travel process, as well as to explore the possible impact of cultural differences on the use of social media during the students' travel process. Design, methodology, approach - A structured questionnaire was employed for the quantitative research focusing on the use of social media during the three different phases of the travel process-pre-travel, on-travel, and post-travel. The data were collected by means of an online survey via Google Drive, and descriptive statistics was used to interpret the acquired data. Findings - The research offers an important insight into the use of social media among students. It shows what drives Czech students to use social media during the three phases of the travel process, and what the main reason is for social media use. Interestingly, 54% of students make use of social media during the travel process, because they want to get other people's opinions. Research has shown that the most popular social media site among traveling students was Facebook (82%), followed by Instagram (56%) and YouTube (35%). The research also showed that despite the abundant use of social media by students, conventional sources of information were still important, too. Contrary to theoretical assumptions, the research did not prove that cultural differences fundamentally influenced the use of social media among Czech and Croatian students. Originality of the research - The results are useful for marketing professionals as the research yields highly valuable data on social media use by a particular group of Czech students. At the same time, the results are an important extension of the current theory on the use of social media during the travel process.