The Research On Information Search Behavior Of Independent Traveler In A Group Based On Internet Community

In recent years, independent travel in a group is a new way to travel rising in the domestic Internet community, and this type has been adopted by many independent travellers. independent traveller in a group has the same general features as independent traveller, for example:purpose of recreation, not buy tourism products from travel agency in the process of travel, not accompanied by a pay tour guide, choose travel destination, organize travel route and arrange travel activities by themselves, they also have them own distinct features:they gather, organize and participate in the independent travel in a group through the Internet community. After years of practice, independent travellers gradually aroused attention, a lot of the literature material have researched the motivation of information search, influence factors, and search channel. At the same time, some researchers also begin to pay attention to this travel type, individual literature have analysed it, but there isn’t any research on information searching behaviour of independent traveller in a group, especially lack on the role of independent traveller in a group.On the basis of study on independent traveller and tourism information searching behaviour before, this paper try to learn independent traveller in a group on the Internet community, try to find difference of information searching behaviour between organizers and participants on before travel, in travel, after travel three stages, and explain the reasons for the differences.Because the research is still on the stage of exploration, using the quantitative study method is too hard to achieve the purpose of the deep research. So this paper adopts conversational case study method, use literature method, interview method, and participatory observation to obtain abundant research material. Through the literature review and data collection, compare organizers to participants from before travel, in travel, to after travel stage, mainly from information search channels, the information search important point, information search effort three aspects, summarizes the differences of information searching in three stages, combined with their activities motivation and the current tour information search theory to explain and analysis the differences.Study found that, there is obvious role definition of organizers and participants in independent traveller in a group on the Internet community. And there are great differences in motivation and information searching behaviour. As one main organization motivation, business interests motivation is revealed, organizers’ information search effort is higher than participants in every stage. In addition, this research finds that the participants having less experience show no difference with traditional package tourists on the information search efforts, this suggests that the original theory which less previous experience more information search efforts is not applicable for independent traveller in a group. This article through researching independent traveller in a group information searching behaviour to envision characteristics of independent traveller in a group, through the study of conclusion trying to give reasonable suggestions to tourism enterprise. Considering exploratory research of the new phenomenon, limitation of time and funds, there are many shortcomings in this research, for example:lack of multiple cases comparison, lack comprehensive utilization of qualitative research and quantitative research, and so on.. Many problems worth studying are left for the future.