Discovering cities with peer-to-peer local-guided bike tours: tourists’ experiences and perceptions

ABSTRACT

This study explores tourists’ experiences and perceptions of peer-to-peer (P2P) local-guided bike tours using a netnography approach. The content of reviews of tourists regarding P2P local-guided bike tours offered by a sharing economy platform – Withlocals – in different destinations was analysed. The results show that tourists’ experiences of P2P local-guided bike tours include discovery, hedonic, safety and comfort, edutainment, local interaction, and memorable aspects. In addition, tourists perceive P2P local-guided bike tours in various ways. Our findings illustrate that P2P local-guided bike tours can be defined as engaging activities that provide multidimensional and rich experiences and help explore a destination. Due to the lack of research on P2P local-guided bike tours and the increasing demand by tourists for these tours, this study fills the gap by exploring tourists’ P2P local-guided bike tour experiences and perceptions. Furthermore, although this research will guide scholars and practitioners, future studies could shed more light on the subject.

KEYWORDS:

• Bike tour experience
• local P2P guiding
• sharing economy
• local-guided tour
• netnography approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Faruk Seyitoğlu

Faruk Seyitoğlu is an Associate Professor at Mardin Artuklu University, Turkey, and a postdoc researcher at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. He is also an expert at Zangador Research Institute, Bulgaria. His research interests include tourist behaviour and experience, destination management and marketing, gastronomy and food studies, robots in tourism, and tourism planning and development.

Ozan Atsız

Dr Ozan Atsız holds a PhD and a master’s degree in Tourism Management (Turkey). Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Tourism, Nevşehir Hacıbektaş University. His research interests include destination marketing, heritage experience, and length of stay of tourists.