Golden Years, Golden Shores: A Study of Elders in Online Travel Communities

TL;DR

This study explores how senior tourists share knowledge and experiences in online communities, revealing their active participation and the development of a thematic codebook for future automated analysis tools.

Contribution

It introduces a new qualitative codebook for analyzing senior tourists' online content, combining literature review and empirical research to facilitate automated knowledge extraction.

Findings

Older adults frequently mention their age and share travel experiences.

Senior tourists discuss motivations but not barriers more than others.

The study provides a foundation for automated analysis of senior travel communities.

Abstract

In this paper we present our exploratory findings related to extracting knowledge and experiences from a community of senior tourists. By using tools of qualitative analysis as well as review of literature, we managed to verify a set of hypotheses related to the content created by senior tourists when participating in on-line communities. We also produced a codebook, representing various themes one may encounter in such communities. This codebook, derived from our own qualitative research, as well a literature review will serve as a basis for further development of automated tools of knowledge extraction. We also managed to find that older adults more often than other poster in tourists forums, mention their age in discussion, more often share their experiences and motivation to travel, however they do not differ in relation to describing barriers encountered while traveling.