CACTUS CACTUS J Tour Bus Manag Econ CACTUS – Journal of Tourism Business, Management and Economics 2247-3297 ASE Publishing House Bucharest, Romania 10.24818/CTS/5/2023/1.03 cactus-2023-3 Research Article L83, M31, M37 Generation Z vs. Generation Y: different from or similar? A comparison of centennials and millennials regarding the use of social media for travel purposes Șchiopu Andreea Fortuna https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6524-0190 andreea.schiopu@com.ase.ro Nica Ana-Maria https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5830-9428 Pădurean Ana Mihaela https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6511-0185 Ţală Mădălina-Lavinia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0096-4195 Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania 15 6 2023 5 1 1562023 Copyright © 2023, The Author(s) 2023 The Author(s) This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

The tourists’ decision-making process and sharing behaviors while travelling and social media are intertwined, especially for the young tech-savvy generations. Nevertheless, papers comparing generation Y and Z in this respect are scarce. By surveying two samples, this paper aims to investigate if generations Y and Z are different in terms of social media use for travelling purposes. The results indicate Centennials get more information about journeys from social networks. Moreover, they give more value to online photos during the travel decision-making than generation Y. During the actual journey, Centennials depend less on Facebook and more on Instagram than Millennials. The two samples are significantly different in terms of sharing behavior of their travel experiences. Last but not least, the number of hours spent daily on social media influences the usage of social media while travelling for both generations.

 Keywords Generation Y and Generation Z travel online sharing decision-making

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