In the era of COVID-19, travel decisions are influenced by social norms, which is a deciding factor between one’s perception of risk and their travel intention. Moreover, serious safety measures, such as increased aircraft cleaning, social distancing during the boarding process, and the use of face masks are critical factors that influence passengers’ trust in air travel. This study examines the direct effects of safety and preventive measures and social norms on passengers’ trust in travelling with airlines. A total of 210 responses were obtained online. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the study hypotheses. Based on the result, social norms are the most influential predictors of passengers’ trust, followed by safety and preventive measures. Furthermore, the study suggests that media coverage and social circle influence can be critical elements in transferring information to passengers, influencing their decision, and instill trust to travel during the pandemic. Notably, apart from exercising social norms, the airline industry also needs to focus on safety and preventive measures consisting of staff safety practices towards the passenger and new standard operating procedures (SOPs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study findings assist the airline industry in understanding passengers’ post-pandemic travelling behaviour. Notably, the implementation of health security protocols at airports, supported by the provision of continuous safety information, is indeed an important feature for passengers.

This study examines the direct effects of technology acceptance (perceived usefulness and ease of use), trustworthiness, expertise, and the moderating effect of COVID-19 perceived health risk on tourists’ social media User-Generated-Content (UGC) usage intention. The study respondent was 233 Malaysian tourists who travelled domestically for leisure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study hypotheses were examined using multiple regression analysis. The hypotheses testing indicates that perceived usefulness, ease of use, trustworthiness, and expertise significantly affect future usage of social media UGC. In addition, the findings confirm that perceived health risk does not affect the user trustworthiness and future usage of social media UGC. The findings assist tourism stakeholders in understanding tourist behaviour towards social media UGC, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tourism business and policymakers should continuously improve and monitor their UGC platform, especially since UGC was deemed one of the vital information dissemination channels during the COVID-19 pandemic.

No abstract

Given the intangible characteristic of travel products and services, it is not unusual for prospective tourists to embrace information provided by various sources to help them in making travel decisions. User-generated content and social networking sites on the Internet have become powerful and common information-seeking and sharing platforms among tourists. The study investigates the influence of Instagram travel content (ITC), emphasizing four key attributes: novelty, reliability, understandability, and interestingness on perceived enjoyment and tourists' intention to visit tourist destinations. An online survey involving 208 Malaysian Instagram users was executed. Multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship among the variables. Findings show that ITC that is reliable, understandable and interesting could provide enjoyment to Instagram users seeking travel information, either intentionally or unintentionally. The enjoyment of consuming ITC may evoke users' interest to travel to the destination. The novelty of ITC is not a significant factor for perceived enjoyment.

This paper examines the influence of Destination Management Organization (DMO) website features toward the intention of users to visit a destination. Using the quantitative approach, the experience of individuals who had browsed DMO website was tapped and through online surveys, 213 questionnaires were successfully collected. Through a series of analyses; frequency, descriptive and regression analysis, some useful insights on the issue investigated was obtained. The findings clearly revealed that the DMO website features; informativeness, design and interactivity significantly contributed to the prediction of the users' intention to visit a destination. These scenarios undoubtedly drawn several practical implications