Sant eller falskt? : Recensioners trovärdighet inom upplevelseindustrin

Sammanfattning: The following study aims to give a first look into the process of when tourists searches for information before a trip and to understand how they reflect over the reliability in different kinds of information. Internet has an important meaning for information research, especially within the tourism business and experience economy. The value of reviews has grown increasingly bigger for customers when they are about to look for information, decide which product that suits them the most and to make their decision. While positive reviews have become yet more important for a product/experience to get chosen by the customer, false reviews have started to take their places at the websites of reviews. The reasons behind may be to raise a certain product’s ratings or simply to give another product or company a bad reputation.The following essay put light on the problem with the phenomena of false reviews and how these can harm the tourism industry in several ways. The study will highlight how different segments of tourists searches information, what value reviews have to them and what makes a review seem trustworthy or faked. The segments that were asked to participate in the survey were chosen based on their age and life situation. Through this we created the following three groups: students, parents from a family with children, and people who are retired.The result of the study shows that many of the respondents within the segment Students use online reviews to gather information and to boost their motives for consumption. The respondents within the other two groups mainly use the tourism companies’ own websites when they are about to consume. An important result of the study is that, although many respondents gave the answer that they mainly search information on websites, they still put greater trust in rumors and comments from friends, especially the respondents within the segment parents from a family with children. It has also been proved that the use of internet increases the risk of getting a negative experience.