Provide a 7 pages analysis while answering the following question: Social Media and Its Impact on the Tourism Industry. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. Social media websites represent forms such as blogs (referred to as consumer-generated content (CGC)), social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and so on, wikis, video and media files sharing sites mostly YouTube and Flickr, and also collaborative sites have definitely gained a lot of popularity amongst today’s internet users (Yoo et al, 2009). This paper will expound on social media and how it is influencing the tourism sector. In addition, the paper will outline a number of impacts that the social media platforms have on the future of the industry and how it affects marketing and service strategies.

It is crucial that the definition of some terms is made. Tourism itself is not a difficult topic to ponder. It entails the movement of people from one place to another mostly for leisure and pleasure. That is a visit to a place far from home that does not entail any making of money is a tourism expedition. While it is possible to spend as much time as possible in the country or region of visit, staying over a period of 12 months is not considered tourism, the person becomes a local. On the other hand, social media, according to the Merriam-Webster, is said to be the forms of electronic communication such as websites for microblogging and social networking where the users of the sites create communities on the web for sharing of information, personal messages, ideas, and any other content (for instance videos and music). For the past several years, social media has undoubtedly had the most exponential growth in the world today. Data shows that in September 2005, there were only 16% of all the internet users aged between 18 and 29 that were social networking-site users. Less than 5 years later, this number had grown to a whopping 86%. Also, data on internet users aged between 30-49, those aged between 50-64, and lastly those aged above 65 had their social networking-site use rise from 12 to 61, 7 to 47, and 5 to 26 percent, respectively.