ABSTRACT
Customers of the 21st century are busy and demanding and above all, they display unpredictable behaviour. Whenever they need information on a particular product or service, they resort to sources that are practical, convenient, less time-consuming and cost-efficient. But they can also change their decision and act otherwise at the last minute. In the tourism context, understanding the process of information search of travellers gets even more complicated. Unlike with products, the information searching in tourism does not stop once the destination is selected. Acquisition of information (e.g. choosing accommodation, transportation and tourism activities) continues after the destination selection, so that grasping an understanding of this ongoing pattern poses a considerable challenge to marketers and tourism service providers. The information-savvy tourists usually gather a variety of media and non-media types of information derived from internal and external sources in order to support their tourism decisions. However, with the emergence of travel technologies (blogs, interactive online platforms), it has become more difficult to understand the information search pattern of tourists. Research reveals that when internal sources are insufficient, tourists will usually start gathering from external sources but if the cost of external information is high, tourists might go back to internal sources or adopt other approaches of information search.
