Role of social media in outbound leisure travel: an interpretive analysis of Indian travellers

The role of social media (SM) in the travel process cannot be ignored. With a steady growth of the Indian travel industry, we find an upsurge in the number of Indians travelling to outbound destinations. This research aims to explore the travel behaviour and the usage of SM for travel purposes by Indian outbound leisure travellers during their entire travel process. It adopts a qualitative approach. Semi structured interviews were conducted with 30 respondents, who had travelled internationally for leisure over the past one year from the period of the study. A thematic analysis of interviews was conducted to identify manifest and latent contexts. In addition to the extent and scope of SM usage, the findings establish that the entire travel process is a cycle of pre-travel SM consumption and post-travel SM creation stages. There is a heavy usage of SM during the two stages though there is limited SM usage during-travel. The findings have been used to develop a conceptual model.