HOW INFLUENTIAL ARE TRAVEL WEBSITES ON TRAVELLERS' TRAVEL PLANNING? AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN TURKEY

Travel websites have become one of the most influential tools in travel planning and they have been commonly used in today's travel world as access to the internet has become easier and more widespread thanks to technological advancements. This research intended to examine the perceptions of Turkish travellers regarding travel websites in terms of their perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived trustworthiness and behavioural intention to use information obtained through travel websites and their impacts on their travel planning and decision making processes. Simple random sampling method, which is a type of probability sampling, was used in data collection and 212 travellers from Turkey filled in the relevant questionnaire. Respondents were filtered with the help of filtering questions at the beginning of the questionnaire and only those living in Turkey and having used any travel websites in their travel planning were included in the study. The results obtained through relevant statistical analyses revealed that there is a positive relationship among perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived trustworthiness of travel websites and behavioural intention to use information obtained from such websites. The research also revealed that education level is a factor influencing travellers' decision-making process in the constructs explained in detail in the study.


INTRODUCTION
People have always travelled for some basic purposes throughout the history of humanity. However, thanks to advancements in modern technology, the number of people travelling has increased. As a consequence of that, planning travels have started to be a more complex task which needs investing more time or sometimes more money in today's modern world. Travellers have started to give more priority to having quality and the latest information about the products and services that they intend to consume. Because travellers know that if their travels are not planned appropriately using appropriate tools, they may have to satisfy with poor quality products and services as well as suffering from many other unexpected sufferings in their travel experiences (Bonsall, 2004). For long years, it had been a traditional practice for tourists to go to the offices of travel agencies and consult about their upcoming travels as all facilities and knowledge regarding the upcoming travel are in the hands of agencies, and thus travel agencies used to control many travel-related tasks such as organising transportation and accommodation for the consumers. As such traditional travel agencies had limited contact with their suppliers due to insufficient technological tools, the services and products supplied by these agencies for the consumers also had to be limited. However, in today's digital world in which the use of internet-based services in the travel business has been becoming more and more common, travels offer much more options for consumers. As the number of hotel, restaurant and airline services have increased, it has become a more difficult task for travellers to appropriately and effectively plan their travels employing such tools. The easiness and the comfort of travelling in today's world are closely related to and dependent on the advancement in technology as guessed by Sheldon (1997) suggesting that it progressed towards a common future. The advancements in technology have already replaced traditional travel agents, as guessed by Sheldon (1997), and online travel agents have emerged. As a consequence of that, many other technology-integrated novelties have come into use in the travel sector such as mobile phones and digital guides. With these advancements and with the integration of technology into the travel business, it has become easier for the internet users to do a search and find the information that they need on the web. The experts that see this advancement in the internet have started to offer advertisements appeealing to travellers to encourage them to specifically consume their products or services. This also made travel planning a confusing and tricky task for travellers. After all these, travel marketers are not the only source of information anymore because travellers share their travel-related experiences with others on the internet, and other people benefit from such information to plan their upcoming travels (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010) and to guarantee their pleasure from their travel. With the increase in the amount of information generated by travellers, a new network has emerged, which has been named as travel websites. Travel websites have some positive and negative effects on travellers' travel planning. However, the number of studies examining such positive and negative effects is very limited in the relevant literature. There are many studies in the relevant literature on travelrelated and consumer-generated media (Ayeh, Au & Law, 2013;Cox, Burgess, Sellitto & Buultjens, 2009;Noone, McGuire & Rohlfs, 2011;Lo, McKercher, Lo, Cheung & Law, 2011;Xiang & Gretzel, 2010), on the use of the internet and search engines such as google for travel planning purpose (Fesenmaier, Xiang, Pan & Law, 2010), on the effects of online reviews and their use (Gretzel & Yoo, 2008); on the factors motivating internet users for sharing information on social media, electronic world of mouth and trustworthiness of online information (Filieri, & McLeay, 2014;Munar,&Jacobsen, 2014). Aiming similar purposes with the studies mentioned above, this study intends to fill the gap in the relevant literature exploring what travel website is and the possible impacts of travel websites on the travel planning of Turkish travellers. Therefore, this study aimed to answer the following research question; What impact/s do travel websites have on the travel planning process of travellers in Turkey? This study chose to specifically focus on travel websites as they have emerged as a new environment for internet users, where travellers can share and contribute their travel-related experiences and examine the possible impacts of such networks through empirical research findings.

LITERATURE REVIEW Tourism vs Electronic Tourism (e-tourism)
Tourism is defined as a social, cultural and economic phenomenon leading to the movement of people from one country to another, or from the places outside their usual environment for personal, professional or business purpose (United Nations World Tourism Organisation, 2014). The term of tourism can also be defined based on the purpose of travelling (leisure, business, visiting relatives), the type of trip to the destination, being international/national or the duration of the trips. However, what makes today's modern people different from those in the past is that they could act as their personal travel agencies, and they can also tailor their travel planning using the available technological facilities and the contents that they offer. Buhalis and Law (2008) state that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have transformed tourism beginning from the 1980s. ICTs are defined as communication technologies which facilitate interaction among users and the flow of information among parties (Rice, 1984). ICTs have improved the business processes of the supply side in tourism as well as the processes in the demand side. ICTs have empowered consumers to identify, customize and purchase products and services around the world and provided them endless opportunities (Buhalis & O'Connor, 2005). In addition to that, ICTs have become an inseparable part of the tourism system providing new tools and contents to facilitate the flow and organisation of tourism-related information among users (Leung et. al. (2013). Buhalis (2003) claims that the digitalization of business processes in the tourism and travel sector is considered within the scope of e-tourism electronic tourism). Travel planning Cohen (1984) stated that travellers have different motivations and travelling styles, and so they tend to perform different activities during their travels. Cohen also refused the claims which suggest that all tourists could be put into one category and also mentioned about five different styles and motivations for tourists; diversionary, experiential, experimental, existential and recreational. Cox et. al. (2009) stated that travellers follow a unique way in their travel-related decision-making processes. This process is very similar to the decision-making model of consumers which consists of 5 key stages (Kotler, Bowen, & Makens, 2017). Cox et. al. (2009 adapted this model to the tourism context as seen in Figure 1. At the pre-trip stage, travellers realize that they need to travel and therefore, they start to search. After gathering enough information through their search, they evaluate the available alternatives and decide on a certain trip, which happens at during trip stage. The decision to purchase is an important step in the during trip stage because travellers usually evaluate their experience following the end of their planned trip at this stage. The last stage is the post-trip stage at which travellers share their experience with friends and relatives, or they may even write comments and reviews about their experience. When travellers plan their trips, they usually collect and examine information obtained from many different sources, and their purpose in that is to avoid spending their travel in a bad destination (Jeng & Fesenmaier, 2002) and to increase the quality of their travel. In today's travel planning, travellers obtain information from digital and real sources, which makes the task of travel planning a more challenging. Travellers also tend to use the content generated by other travellers based on their travel experience (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). Arsal, Backman & Baldwin (2008) claim that travellers find user-generated content the most helpful in their travel planning.

E-Word of Mouth
Word of mouth (WOM) is defined as information coming from family, friends and people with whom a person interacts with socially and make up the reference group of the consumer. These people seem to influence the behaviours of that person (Middleton & Clarke, 2001). However, electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) is defined as the electronic form of the traditional WOM. With the help of blogs, forums and reviews, people who do not know one another and who are at distant places can interact with one another in real-time instead of meeting physically in one place (Cheng & Zhou, 2010). There are many studies in the tourism literature suggesting that e-WOM is very important and e-WOM communication is as powerful as traditional WOM (Buhalis & Law, 2008;Xiang & Gretzel, 2010;Yoo, Lee, Gretzel & Fesenmaier, 2009;Munar &Jacobsen, 2014).

Travel Websites
It has been already mentioned that travellers seem to use user-generated content as a source of information in their travel planning (Jacobsen & Munar, 2012;Cox et. al., 2009;Yoo & Gretzel, 2009). Today's travellers use web blogs to share their travel-related experiences with others globally. Blood (2002) defined blogs as the link driven sites where individuals can post their essays or comments and their notes as short journals. When the advancement in technology is considered, it is seen that people make contributions with their audio or video content using their mobile phones (Baker & Green, 2008). Wang and Fesenmaier (2002) claim that the major incentive for travellers to share their travel-related experience on online blogs is the satisfaction of sharing experience. Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness PEU and PU are the two constructs of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) which was proposed first by Davis in 1986, and it has been studied in many studies to forecast users' intention to adopt new technologies (Ayeh et. al., 2013). Davis (1989) stated that perceived ease of use is related to when technology users have a problem in using new technology because of some difficult, complicated steps which should be taken to effectively benefit from and therefore, users avoid using the new technology. Davis (1989) also stated that perceived usefulness is the degree where it influences new users' attitude towards using the new technology. If users tend to perceive that the new technology or system is beneficial for them, they tend to have a higher level of acceptance to that new technology or system. If do not, they will avoid the new system or technology (Joo, Lim, & Kim, 2016;Yao & Cao, 2017).

Perceived Trustworthiness
It is a construct of Information Adoption Model (IAM). In marketing literature, trust has been seen as a key element in establishing a long-lasting relationship (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). It is claimed that there is a close and strong relationship between the trustworthiness of obtained information and its usefulness (Sussman & Siegal, 2003). Jin, Cheung, Lee, and Chen (2009) also confirmed this claim suggesting that usefulness of newly obtained information is directly effective on users' level of trust in the newly obtained information. Davis (1989) also mentions that behavioural intention is the actual act of using the new technology which users accept. That means that when individual feel that the new technology they attempted to use is beneficial and it has some userfriendly features, they will have higher feelings of willingness to use the new technology or system. METHODOLOGY This study aims to identify the effects of travel websites on travel planning of Turkish travellers by examining the possible relationship among perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of travel websites, behavioural intention to use it and level of trust tourists have in such a network. The obtained data in the study was analysed through the use of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

Research Model of the Study and Hypotheses Tested
In the study the following hypotheses were developed to test;  H1: Turkish travellers differ in their perceptions regarding travel websites' perceived ease of use (PEU), perceived usefulness (PU), behavioural intentions to use information (BITUI) and perceived trustworthiness (PT) based on gender.  H2: Turkish travellers differ in their perceptions regarding travel websites' perceived ease of use (PEU), perceived usefulness (PU), behavioural intentions to use information (BITUI) and perceived trustworthiness (PT) based on age.  H3: Turkish travellers differ in their perceptions regarding travel websites' perceived ease of use (PEU), perceived usefulness (PU), behavioural intentions to use information (BITUI) and perceived trustworthiness (PT) based on education level. In the study, it was also expected that there is a significant correlation among PEU, PU, PT and BITUI. As a consequence of that, the following hypothesis was proposed;  H4: There is a significant correlation among Perceived Ease of Use (PEU), Perceived Trustworthiness (PT), Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Behavioural Intention to Use Information BITUI). Therefore, the following sub-hypotheses were also developed to test based on H4: o H4a: Perceived ease of use (PEU) of travel websites has a positive effect on the behavioural intention to use the information (BITUI) from travel websites o H4b: Perceived usefulness (PU) of travel websites has a positive effect on the behavioural intention to use the information (BITUI) obtained from travel websites in travel planning. o H4c: Perceived trustworthiness (PT) of travel websites has a positive effect on the behavioural intention to use the information (BITUI) obtained from travel websites in travel planning. Based on the sub-hypotheses stated above, the following structural model (Figure 2) was proposed to examine the effect of travel websites on travel planning processes of Turkish travellers.

Data Collection Tool
Questionnaires have been used as a means of data collection tool in the social sciences for a long time. Surveys could help researchers produce insights into individuals' awareness, opinions, outlooks and sentiments, behaviours or characteristics (Taylor-Powell, 1998). Questionnaires are data collection tools which help researchers collect and organize target data systematically and to analyse statistically. The questionnaire used in this study was adapted from Bashar (2014) and implemented as a five-point Likert scale. The online survey used in this study was designed under four sections. The first question of the survey was about if respondents had ever used travel websites in their travel planning and they were asked to mark as "Yes" or "No". The respondents were asked to stop responding to the questionnaire if their response was "No" to the first question. They were requested to continue with section one if they replied as "Yes" to the first question. This question was asked to the participants before respondents continued with the first section in the questionnaire because the researcher aimed to reach the population travelling and benefitting from travel websites in their travel planning. The questionnaire had 5 items for each of PEU, PEU, PT and BITUI scale Online Survey Technique For data collection, a google.doc online survey was designed in the Turkish language as it was the common means of communication in the setting where the study was conducted. The reason for preferring a web-based survey rather than a traditional paper-based survey are plentiful. First, online surveys are useful in research related to the use of the Internet. With such an online survey, researchers can have access to the population possessing internet experience. Another reason is that online surveys make it possible for the researchers to have access to various sample groups, such as different age groups from different locations. Such surveys also play a role in cost reduction in research as data collection may cost a lot for the researchers when traditional paper-based methods are used. It also saves time for researchers (Wright, 2005). The online questionnaire was distributed in four sections following the question asking if respondents had ever used any travel website in their travel planning. The first section aimed to understand the PEU of travel websites in planning their travels. The second section intended to find out their responses regarding the PU of the travel websites, the third section was about measuring the PT of travel websites and the final section was about measuring respondents' BITUI that they obtain through travel websites.

Sampling and Data Collection
Probability sampling is generally preferred for online surveys (Saunders, Lewuis & Thornhill, 2000). If probability sampling is conducted appropriately, it is a signal of a clear representation of the target population (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Taham, 2006). This study intended to focus on travellers who are benefitting from travel websites in their travel plans. This study collected data from a sample and intended to generalize to the population. To achieve this, the survey was sent to the friends of the author who live in Turkey through his social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn groups. Of the 1322 friends of the author on the social network sites, 57,03% of them were female and the remaining 42,97% of them were found to be male. The age range of the friends of the authors was between 17 and 81. The friends of the author on the social networks were found to be from 53 cities in Turkey, and the friends of the author from other countries were disregarded in the data collection stage as this study intended to gather data from Turkish travellers and to make a generalisation for Turkish travellers. The survey was conducted between February 1 and June 28, 2019. Participation in the study was voluntary. It took about 8 minutes for the respondents to complete the online survey. The link of the survey was sent to each friend through private messages explaining details about the research. The online survey was set in a way to allow each respondent to take the survey only for once. It was found that 212 respondents completed the survey without missing any item. As each respondent was asked if they had ever travelled before they started the questionnaire, so all respondents filling in the four sections were automatically accepted to have used travel websites in their travels planning. The advantage of using an online survey is that it allows researchers to download the collected data in an excel spreadsheet format, which could be easily converted into an SPSS data file for further analysis.

DATA ANALYSIS
Reliability of the scales were measured through Cronbach's Alpha and as seen in Table 1, the Cronbach Alpha value of the scale "PEU" was found to be α =, 913, for the scale "PU", it was found to be α=,948, for the scale "PT", it was found to be α =, 944 and for the scale "BITUI", it was calculated as α=,891. All of the scales were found to be highly reliable in line with the calculated Cronbach Alpha values (α=, 70). Cronbach's alpha is described as 'one of the most important and pervasive statistics in research involving test construction (Cortina, 1993, p. 98) and it is used in the research with multiple-item measurements as a routine method (Schmitt, 1996, p.350).  (2014), as stated before. Therefore, a confirmatory factor analysis (Principal Component Analysis) was performed on the data. The principle Component Analysis results are seen in Table 2. The items on the questionnaire were found to be highly loading the relevant factors, which are "PEU", "PU", "PT" and "BITUI". No values were suppressed in the scale as all of their factor loadings were found to be well above, 5 (Hair et.al., 2006). Analysis was performed on the data. FINDINGS As seen in Table 1, 54,7% of the participants were male (n=116) and 45,3% of them were female (n=96). 9% of them were aged between 18-30 (n=19), 31,1% of them were aged between 31-40 (n=66), 47,2% of them were aged between 41-50 (n=100), and 12,7% of them were aged 51 and above (n= 27). The rate of those who are graduates of High School was 3,8% (n= 8), 9% of them were found to have an associate degree (n=19), 45,8% of them had a university degree, 41,5% of them were found to have a post-graduate degree (n=88). In Table 4, you can see the gender-based mean scores of the participants as well as standard deviations and standard errors for each of the scale. The scale was designed as 5-point Likert scale, and mean scores of each scale was tested to see if it significantly differed from 3 which was taken as the test value. All of the scales were found to have significantly differed from the test value 3 as seen in Table 5. To test the hypothesis 1 "Turkish travellers differ in their perceptions regarding travel websites' perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, behavioural intentions to use the information and perceived trustworthiness based on gender", Independent Samples t-test was performed. As seen in Table 6, no significant difference was found based on gender (p˃,324, p˃,405, p˃,938, p˃,548). So H1 was rejected. After that, One Way Anova test was performed to test the hypothesis 2 "Turkish travellers differ in their perceptions regarding travel websites' perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, behavioural intentions to use information and perceived trustworthiness based on their age" As seen in Table 7, it was found that there was not any significant difference between them based on their ages (p˃,017, p˃,250, p˃,225, p˃,227). To test the hypothesis "H3: Turkish travellers differ in their perceptions regarding travel websites' perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, behavioural intentions to use information and perceived trustworthiness based on education level", One Way Anova test was performed, and it was found, as seen in Table 8, that there was a significant difference between the groups (p˃,001). As it was found in One Way Anova Test that there was a significant difference between groups, Tukey HSD test was performed to see which groups differed. As seen in Table 9, it was found that the graduates of High School significantly differed from those with a postgraduate degree in "PEU" (p˃,002). In the study, it was also expected that there is a correlation among "PEU", "PU", "PT" and "BITUI". Therefore, H4 was developed. Accordingly, Hypothesis 4a, 4b and 4c were also proposed to test through Regression Analysis. To test the hypothesis 4 "There is a significant correlation among Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Trustworthiness, Perceived Usefulness and Behavioural Intention to Use Information", correlation analysis was performed, and it was found that there was a significant correlation among the tested variables. Therefore, H4 was accepted (See Table 10). To test the hypotheses 4a "Perceived ease of use of travel websites has positive effect on the behavioural intention to use the information from travel websites", hypothesis 4b "Perceived usefulness of travel websites has positive effect on the behavioural intention to use the information obtained from travel websites in travel planning", and hypothesis 4c "Perceived trustworthiness of travel websites has positive effect on the behavioural intention to use the information obtained from travel websites in travel planning", Regression Analysis was performed on the data. As seen in Table 11, "BITUI" was taken as the dependent variable and Regression Analysis was performed. The variables of "PEU", "PU" and "PT" were found to have a significant effect on "BITUI", and 48% of the "BITUI" could be explained with reliability factor, and it was also found the relationship among the variables were significant (p<0,05). In line with these findings H4a, H4b and H4c were confirmed.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This study is a significant one as it has provided clear definitions for some newly emerged and commonly used terms in tourism. With this study, it was found that perceived trustworthiness has a significant effect on consumers' behavioural intention to use the information that they obtain from the travel websites. It is also another finding of the study that education matters in access to technological tools in travel and tourism business and using the data obtained from such sites. That is why when structuring a travel-related website, the education level of the possible users of these websites should also be considered and they should be designed in a user-friendly way for any user types. This study also has some contributions for tourism practitioners because they should always keep in mind that the technological tools that they have put into service, expecting positive contributions and more profits and easiness, may have some reverse effects on their business. They should also keep in mind that they should always deliver quality service and quality product as satisfaction or dissatisfaction of clients could more easily spread among consumers thanks to travel websites which offer users and travellers with opportunities to communicate with anybody very easily anywhere in the world. Therefore, they should give more attention to the quality of their products and services considering that any dissatisfaction may give more harm to their business reputation than before as technology use and access to technology in travel business is easier than the past, even the very recent past, and the damages that such failure leads to may be irreparable. Tourism practitioners should also give more importance to describing their products or services accurately as any failure in that may easily get spread among consumers. They should also be more careful in building good communication with their customers as any unsolved dissatisfaction could be reflected on their profitability thanks to travel websites. This paper is also important for those companies selling or providing technological tools for the tourism business and they should create products or services easy to use for consumers. If any technological tool is found difficult to use by consumers, products or services will be accessed less and profitability of tourism business owning these products and services will decrease accordingly. Because easiness has a very significant impact of the behavioural intentions of consumers to use the obtained information in their travel-related decision-making processes. Another issue that should be kept in mind is that trust is a factor in travel business as it directly affects the usability of the products and services, and it should be remembered that no matter how useful a product or service for consumers, if clients have no trust in them, the lifespan of products and services will be very short and the company will get no benefit from these products and services. Tourism practitioners should always remember that trust is a factor which could be built through positive reinforcements in virtual settings. That's why all technological tools used in the travel and tourism business, should integrate review opportunities directly on the newly structured websites.

Limitations of the Study
In the research, the number of participants had to be below the expected number due to the circumstances beyond the control of the researcher, which also made it difficult for the researcher to conduct One Way Anova test, specifically for educational levels as some of the groups were below 30. But this needs to stay as a limitation as it was considered that combining different levels into one and making interpretation based on this combination would not be appropriate. Therefore, further and more detailed research is needed to overcome and retest this limitation regarding this variable.