Abstract

The emergence of social media as one of the new media has brought important changes to the world of tourism. Social media has given space to interact with each other. Various types of social media are very popular for young people, including Facebook, Path, Twitter, and Instagram, and others. Social media offers a different experience for tourists in getting information about products and services in tourism. This study aims to examine the impact of social media on tourist behavior. The respondents of this study were tourists who visited the Kakilangit Market, Bantul, Yogyakarta. This study uses quantitative analysis techniques. The results of this study found that social media influences the behavior of tourists in choosing and deciding about the attractions they will visit. The study also found that tourists use social media to communicate, looking for tourist references, as long as they travel. Furthermore, tourists will also share their experiences while traveling on social media. Social media raises the trend of new tourist objects popularized by posting photos and videos by social media users. Photos and videos uploaded on Instagram for example, represent what is owned by a tourist object or even show facts about the condition of a tourist attraction. This certainly will affect the behavior of consumers as tourists so that Instagram provides the possibility of new opportunities and challenges for tourism actors. Tourism actors are required to understand consumer behavior, especially young people as users of social media in order to design the right marketing strategy for their products.

Keywords

behavior, social media, visiting decisions