Query Titles in Travel Forums: Nature and Impacts on Responses

Despite travel forums being an influential source of electronic word of mouth in the tourism context, the nature of interaction between information inquirers and contributors is yet to be appraised. This study attempts to fill the knowledge gap by exploring the inquiry titles in a travel forum in terms of its nature and influence on viewers’ responses. For empirical examination, thread titles for queries on South Korea and Japan that were posted in the Lonely Planet Thorn tree forum between March 2009 and February 2010 were collected (n?=?220) and analyzed. The results reveal that search by location is prevalent when potential tourists post a query in a travel forum. Search by interest is more likely at the city or regional level, while search by general (SBG) topic is prevalent in national-level search. The nature of inquiry title also reflects the intended length of stay at a destination. SBG in title significantly outweighs other categories in terms of the number of views and replies. Implication of findings and directions for future study are discussed.