Does language make a difference? Exploring the hiking experience of a nation-specific online community

This study explores hiking experiences of Finns within a nation-specific online community. Understanding hiking experiences is crucial for outdoor recreation and tourism management. Academic research on the topic has so far predominantly focused on English-language content and often overlooked the contextual factor of online communities. This study aims to increase our understanding of the hiking experience by comparing two groups of Finnish reviewers: those who wrote their reviews in Finnish and those who wrote in English. The online hiking community of our research comprises 272 individual reviewers on Tripadvisor. Among them, 155 posted reviews only in Finnish, 110 posted only in English, and 6 contributed to both languages. At the end, a total of 329 hiking-related reviews were collected, including 144 in English and 185 in Finnish. The two language groups are compared regarding contribution level, types of hikers, image sharing, travel month, satisfaction ratings, and hiking region. In addition, qualitative content analysis examined the reviews in terms of focus, tone, and audience. Findings show shared trends such as peak hiking in July, high satisfaction levels, and frequent use of photos. However, differences emerged in engagement patterns, types of hikers, and preferred regions. English reviews often used expressive and tourist-oriented language and address broader audiences. Finnish reviews focused on practical trail details and used a nostalgic tone. Their reviews appeared more oriented toward experienced local hikers. The study contributes to understanding hiking experiences by showing that the language of reviews matters significantly. It supports the development of multilingual communication strategies and complements socio-economic analyses. For park management, the results suggest practical strategies. • Focuses on a national-specific online hiking community. • Applies a geodemolinguistic framework to compare hiking groups who write reviews in different languages. • Enhances multilingual park management and online hiking engagement.