Abstract:
Travel and tourism sector is expanding in Pakistan. Earlier for gaining information on trips,
traditional methods like travel agencies were acquired. However, with the arrival of social
media, the transition is now towards influencers who create travel based content. Travel
influencers on social media are playing a key role in promoting tourism digitally just by
creating content through their videos. With little research on this topic specifically in the
context of a developing country like Pakistan where the tourism sector can have a lot of
influential impact on the economy of the country, this study investigates how social media
travel influencers impact Generation Z’s (Gen Z’s) tourist satisfaction among Twin City
University students. Application of uses and gratification theory has been done to examine
how Gen Z satisfy their travel needs by consuming travel influencers content. The study
examines information seeking needs, entertainment needs, visit intention and electronic
word of mouth (E-wom) as a source of satisfaction. This research has employed a
quantitative survey approach and a questionnaire was adapted to assess Gen Z's tourist
satisfaction influenced by social media travel influencers' content consumption. To
evaluate the research hypothesis, data was collected from 850 students from the 4 famous
universities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The universities included Nust, Islamic
International, Arid and Fatima Jinnah to include both co and non-co institutes. This was
based on Multi-stage sampling in which selection of cities was based on convenient
sampling, selection of universities was done on purposive sampling while selection of Gen
Z students was done on simple random sampling. The results were analyzed using the
software SPSS. Findings reveal that there is a significant impact of social media travel
influencers on Gen Z’s tourist satisfaction which evidently supports and accepts the
hypothesis generated. The study further has lots of implications and scope for the tourism
field and provides a lot of insights and understanding for the tourism industry and
organizations.
