Tourists' Online and Face-to-Face Social Contact and Destination Immersion.

Abstract

Tourism is stated to provide a process of transition. Tourists are claimed to enter a liminal space when traveling. Along with the development of the internet, the liminal sense of tourism has been greatly haunted by the advanced communication technology. The current study, adopting a qualitative approach, explored tourists' online and on-site social contact when traveling with different groups. A six-fold tourist typology was established to portrait their behavioural patterns with robust theoretical evidence supported. A contact-liminality nexus was also developed to indicate different tourist types' tendency between their original zone and the liminal zone. Both theoretical contributions and practical implications were discussed.