For many young adults, travelling is meant for relaxation away from ordinary school

activities with their family and friends, it is a time where they desire to learn and experience new

adventures outside the four corners of the classroom. However as the old saying “those who fail

to plan, plan to fail” proves the accurate experiences of travelers who disregard the significance

of travel preparation, this escape from academic and social demands will not be worthwhile.

Indeed, travel planning is a complex and crucial stage that every traveler must consider not only

to gear towards an excellent travel experience, but also to avoid mental stress due to encountered

poor travel products and services (Bonsall, 2014).

Travelling is becoming a mainstream nowadays but understanding the reason behind why

tourists travel is the most fundamental question to be aware of (Libosada & Bosangit, 2007). In

Bansal and Eiselt’s (2004) simple explanation of decision-making process made by tourists, the

planning phase is describe to be the stage where the travelers’ initial decisions on the basic needs

of their trip are still considered to be subjected to change or modification. This stage indicates

that there are still lots of factors that determine their destination choice. One of those influential

factors is the social media, which is recognize as one of the fastest growing communication

technologies that does not only essential in the confines of Internet but also in the concept of

tourism marketing (Buhalis & Law, 2008).

Traditionally, consumers consult travel agents in planning their trip. From transportation,

to accommodation, activities, and their daily meals, they went to see travel agents to organize

their travel itinerary and make their desired trip come true. However, travelling is made easier

nowadays. Through the use popular social media sites, people can do the information searching

by themselves (Rezdy, 2017) and be able to plan their own trip.

 As these technologies profoundly modified the way people travel (Benckendorff,

Sheldon, & Fesenmaier, 2015), these tools also shifted the role of travelers from information

recipients to information creators (Wang, Xiang, & Fesenmaier, 2014b).

The most popular one is Facebook which not only have been a part of our everyday life

but also a significant determinant of the tourism industry success due to the array of features,

networks and communities it provides.

In fact, Wintle (2012) in her article entitled Influence of social media travel indicates that

52 percent of Facebook users said that their friends’ photos inspired their holiday choice and

travel plans. This claim is also supported by a study conducted by MDG Advertising (2017)

shows that “52 percent of travelers use social media to find vacation inspiration, 29 percent of

respondents flocking to Facebook for travel planning ideas, and 14 percent find inspiration in

other travel apps.” These reported data reveal that sharing travel-experience is popular

nowadays. In addition, Forrester Research (2008) concluded that the initial activity of many

consumers is to share their experiences in various forms like through text and images in social

media. This “user-democracy culture” to share information online also increases the bargaining

power of travelers (Leung, Law, Hoof, & Buhalis, 2013, p. 4).

It is because of these studies, the prevalence of sharing travel-experience in Facebook,

and the underlying travel planning problems that the researchers chose to study about the

correlation of travel-experience post in Facebook to the travel planning of selected Grade 11

Senior High School Students in CEU Makati. The purpose of this study is to predominantly

evaluate if the quality of travel-experience posts in Facebook using the constructs of online

information models’ scales which examines how influential and useful this information is a

significant predictor of an efficient travel planning based on various researches and studies.