"If you have a good experience whilst planning and booking your holiday, you’ll be more satisfied afterwards. A positive experience beforehand also makes it more likely that you’ll recommend the holiday to others", says Cecilie Andersen.

She has completed a PhD on the phenomenon known in English as word-of-mouth marketing. The term has sometimes been translated into Norwegian using words such as ‘jungle telegraph’ or ‘word of mouth’.

"I found it really interesting how I myself was influenced by it. I noticed that what other people said was more important than what the companies themselves said. And whenever I was torn between two products, I would always want to hear other people’s opinions," says Andersen.

From spontaneous to carefully planned

The term ‘word-of-mouth marketing’ first appeared in the 1950s to describe the informal conversations people had with friends and acquaintances about products they had experience of.

This was still the case when a young Cecilie Andersen went on an Interrail trip in the 1990s, before the internet changed the way we travel forever.

“I bought a ticket and set off on a four-week trip without having planned a thing. I hadn’t read up on any restaurants to eat at, and I hadn’t been given any tips on the best ice-cream parlour,” she says.

Fast forward a few decades, and it seems unthinkable that anyone would take even a weekend trip to the neighbouring town without planning the trip down to the last detail. Often based on what has received the best reviews on travel sites such as Tripadvisor or Hotels.com.

On such services, it is the users themselves who write reviews of their experiences. The reviews are used to rank everything from hotels to restaurants and, yes, ice-cream kiosks.

Good planning leads to more sharing

Andersen and his colleagues based their research on responses from over 5,000 holidaymakers from Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. These three countries are Norway’s most important tourism markets.

“It was in these responses that I found the link between pre-holiday planning and positive word of mouth after the holiday. We then carried out a study of 100 British participants to find out why,” says Andersen.

The researchers identified six reasons why good planning made people more likely to share positive holiday experiences with others afterwards:

• Satisfaction: Good planning increases the chances of a successful holiday, and anyone who has had a good holiday is happy to recommend it to others
• Altruism: People want to spare others the same planning effort
• Self-promotion: Having enjoyed a successful holiday makes people want to talk about it
• Belief in one’s ability to cope: A thorough understanding of the details of the trip provides self-confidence and motivation to share
• Risk reduction: Thorough planning provides control and reassurance, which increases the likelihood of a problem-free holiday
• Involvement: Those who get involved in the planning may feel a greater sense of ownership of the experience and enjoy a richer overall experience

“It’s usually not just one factor that determines whether you recommend something or not. What happens before the holiday affects the holiday itself, which in turn affects whether you recommend the holiday afterwards,” says Andersen.

It also turns out that younger people make more recommendations through word-of-mouth than older people, and women do so more than men.

“If you’ve planned well and had a successful holiday, you may feel a greater need to talk about it afterwards to put yourself in a good light. People tend to keep bad experiences to themselves, unless it’s to help others avoid making the same poor choices."

Similarly, a review on TripAdvisor may be written both to help others make good choices and to support a small, local family-run business.

Valuable for the travel industry

A surprising finding was that those who went on package holidays contributed more to word-of-mouth marketing than those who did all the planning themselves.

"We had expected the opposite to be the case. There may be several reasons for this, including the fact that, as package holidays are professionally organised products, they may lead to greater satisfaction and a stronger motivation to share. It may also be that those who plan their own trips simply assume that their approach is not as relevant to others", says Andersen.

The researcher says that the findings could be valuable for the tourism industry. Among other things, they highlight how important it is to provide good information, to have good, simple booking solutions, and to follow up effectively with the customer after the booking.

"But we might ask ourselves whether we perhaps over-plan a little when we go on holiday. We know a great deal about a destination before we arrive; perhaps we miss out on some of the spontaneity", says Andersen.

She is already working on a new research article on artificial intelligence in travel planning.

Reference:

Word of mouth behavior in tourism and hospitality context