Social Media in Travel Decision Making Process
Nindyta Aisyah Dwityas, Rizki Briandana

Abstract
Travel and tourism is one of the most promising sectors in the world, and information is extremely important in this industry. These days, the way of traveler in utilizing this information throughout their travel decision making process has changed. The broad development of Information and Communication Technology especially in tourism industry is one of the factor which made this change happened. It is mainly associated with the emergence of social media as one of the Web 2.0 platform, which offers interactivity to users. The purpose of this study was to find out the travel decision-making process through the use of social media especially from the point of view of Indonesian traveler community members. The theoretical background in this study is based on the concept of consumer behavior, specifically the theory of travel buying behavior and also on the concept of the usage of information on social media. Data was collected through interviews with traveler community’s members "Backpacker Indonesia". This community’s members were chosen based on the results of the observation of the communication and interaction occurred in community’s sites.The main result of this study shows that social media has an important role as source of information to help the traveler in every stage of travel decisionmaking, and at each step, the traveler is using information in carrying out all activities undertaken. The study concluded some recommendations for the scope of academics and theoretical with the model of travel decision making process through the use of social media, as well as for the tourism industry to execute marketing strategies that more focus on the consumers.

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