Golden Years, Golden Shores: A Study of Elders in Online Travel Communities
This incremental research provides insights for developing automated knowledge extraction tools in the domain of online travel communities for seniors.
The study explored content created by senior tourists in online communities, finding that older adults more frequently mention their age, share experiences and motivations, but do not differ in describing travel barriers compared to other posters.
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.