Do Online Travel Communities Matter? A Literature Review

The emergence of social media has migrated consumers from peripheral stakeholders to strategic partners whose inputs are critical for successful product and service innovation. Online communities provide a platform for aggregation of consumers from diverse backgrounds; online travel communities (OTCs) have recently attracted growing interest in the information systems and tourism literature because their unofficial boundary spanning role influences consumer interest in destinations. Importantly, this literature remains largely fragmented because of conflicting findings. The present study seeks to integrate prior OTC research in order to understand the motivations and consequences (negative …