The Effect of the Online News on Tourism

Due to the technological developments, people are able to quickly reach the information and the news about destinations where they have planned to go on their holidays. Online news websites are important and reliable tools which deliver up-to-date information about a destination to broad masses. It is indisputable that the media is a significant influence on public awareness, tourist purchase decision, destination image and tourist behavior. A tourist who chooses a holiday destination decides among countless destinations according to the information he receives from various sources. Therefore, in this study, the news in the two foreign online news sites are interpreted according to the touristic arrival statistics from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The two countries to be included in the study, Germany and England, were selected among the countries that sent the most tourists to Turkey. In these countries, news web sites with the highest number of daily visitors were determined and the news related to Turkey in the 7 years period between 2010 and 2016 were analyzed by content analysis.