Genç Turistlerin Doğu Ekspresi Seferleri Tercihlerinde Instagram’ın Rolü (The Role of Instagram in Eastern Express Train Services Choices of Young Tourists)

Abstract

Social Media has enabled interaction and communication to grow in a way that has never before been seen in any media technology. Opportunities emerged by social media are beginning to be used as an important tool for both consumers and businesses. Especially for tourism businesses, destinations and tourists, social media offers very important advantages. Tourists seeking experience instead of one-sided information transfer are influenced by posts of the people they know or do not know in social media and make travel choices. These posts become popular as a result of many new destinations becoming fashionable. Being popular in our country recently, Eastern Express offers a 24-hour train journey on the 1310 km road, serving on the Ankara-Kars route through TCDD. During the trip, tourists have shared more than 30 contents in various social media sites, especially Instagram, with #karsrail hashtag and 18 contents with #doguekspresi hashtag. As a result of the intensive requests for train tickets, TCDD tries to meet demands by adding additional wagons to the Eastern Express and offering open tickets for sale 1 month in advance. In this study it is aimed to reveal the effect of social media in the preferences of 20 tourists participating in the Eastern Express service. According to the results of the research, it was found that the photos and videos shared on Instagram have an important role in the people preferring the Eastern Express train services.