Social Media as an Effective Promotion Media for Indonesian Tourism

The content which is posted by travelers in social media gives an enough significant contribution, not only to the tourism business, but it also gives benefits for the tourists who will do the tours, those benefits are the information about the service quality, experience, and the interesting variations of the price.

To achieve the goal of the tourism, the characteristics of the message which is delivered through the social media takes an important role in establishing the conviction on the information which is given. It is proven in the dissertation by Theodosia, that in context of the information fulfillment for the travelers, the quality of an argument has positive and significant influence toward the motive of information searching. Indonesian travelers need information which is completed with accurate, relevant, and complete data with a clear consistency of information, to help the travelers to sort out the useful and desirable information. Besides that, another important factor in information searching by the travelers is the source?s credibility. The interesting point of this research, Theodosia found that the competence is not always based on knowledge and source expertise only, but the existence of a person?s influence to others, for example, mostly of the responders’ interest on the information which is shared by a public figure.

Through her dissertation, Theodosia recommends the professionals in tourism to participate and contribute to various tourism forums and socialize the use of social media maximally as the media to introduce the tourism destination in Indonesia. Further, she recommends the government to use social media actively by using brand ambassador that is a public figure with good ability and influence so it increases the interests of society on tourism destination in Indonesia.

Dr. Theodosia C Nathalia