Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science (Jul 2014)
COMPARISON BETWEEN ONLINE AND OFFLINE TOURISM USING ASSOCIATIVE TECHNIQUE
Abstract
Travel and tourism is one of the most dynamic and successful sector in the globalising world. The accelerating and synergistic interaction between technology and tourism in recent times has brought fundamental changes in the industry and on our perceptions of its nature. Several studies show that the Internet has become one of the most important information sources for travel information acquisition. The present paper is focused on a better understanding of tourist behaviors in online versus offline. For investigations it was used exploratory research through qualitative approach. The word association technique from projective techniques it was considered appropriate for this research. It was used Chinese portrait technique to explain deeply the difference between traditional tourism and online tourism and the reasons of preferring mostly use a form or another. The study reveals that the personality of the respondents is almost identical with the constructed profile of online tourism. Interestingly, the remaining associations are found between those assigned to offline tourism. This result was expected because in the sample are even persons that use only offline tourism. These identified profiles have many implications both for further scientific researches, but especially for all actors involved in tourism activities. After consulting the main sources of literature references the present study can be considered one of first researches on online tourism in Romania. The study provides empirical support for identifying features and motivations of online customers and behavioural characteristics of users of online tourism products. The results offer managerial implications for business environment, travel destination areas, services, and facilities and also for tourism organizations.
