Travel experiences documented in online reviews influence travelers’ travel intentions

Online travel reviews (OTRs) have revolutionized the way travelers plan their trips. While previous studies have investigated the impact of OTR attributes on travel intention, little attention has been paid to the impact of travel experiences documented in OTRs. Moreover, prior research has primarily used net effect methods, overlooking the possibility that combinations of different travel experiences may jointly influence travel intention. Based on experiential marketing theory, this study investigates how sensory, affective, behavioral, and intellectual experiences jointly affect travel intention. We collected 9242 online reviews and analyzed them with negative binomial regression and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The findings reveal that sensory, behavioral, affective, and intellectual experiences documented in OTRs form multiple combinations and jointly influence travel intention. Our study contributes to the literature by revealing that the combinations of different travel experiences can affect travel intention.