Seeing destinations through vlogs: implications for leveraging customer engagement behavior to increase travel intention

Purpose This study aims to understand customers’ watching experience with travel vlogs and its impacts on one of the most prominent manifestations of customer engagement behaviors (CEBs) – word-of-mouth (WOM) – and their travel intention. Drawing upon the theory of resonance, this study incorporated both cognitive and emotional aspects of travel vlog watching experience. Design/methodology/approach Online survey data were collected from 352 participants who have watched travel vlogs over the past 12 months. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was performed for hypotheses testing. Findings The study results reveal positive impacts of source credibility, inspiration, escapism and self-congruence on WOM, which further leads to travel intention. While source credibility is the strongest predictor of WOM, more factors representing the emotional resonance turn out to be the driving factors of WOM. Research limitations/implications This study pinpoints the value of investigating audiences’ vlogs watching experience from a CEB perspective within the tourism setting. Future research is encouraged to explore more types of CEBs in the intersection of social media consumption and travel behaviors. Practical implications Travel vloggers need to convey their intrinsic passion and enthusiasm to create an emotional connection with the audiences. Hospitality and tourism marketers are recommended to promote products and services by incentivizing audiences to engage with the travel vlogs. Originality/value No prior research integrated vlogs watching experiences, engagement behavior and future travel intention in a tourism setting. This study fills this gap and contributes to the literature on customer engagement, media consumption and marketing.