Understanding Users’ Intention to Use Mobile Apps in Tourism Industry

Travel mobile apps are becoming a significant tool in the up-to-date tourism destination’ marketing. On the other side, the use of mobile apps has become a noticeable tendency within the travellers. While travellers can gather all necessary information about travel, tourism destination, facilities; stakeholders can offer a wide range of mobile apps and improve the experience of tourism destination. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to analyse the features that influence the intention to use travel mobile apps. The empirical research was conducted in the period from July 22 to September 1, 2023 on a purposive sample of 319 respondents who visited Dubrovnik as a tourism destination. Explorative and confirmatory factor analysis have been used with four factor determinates. Structural equation modelling has been applied to test the proposed relationships between variables. The results indicate the existence of statistically significant relationships between interactivity, effort expectancy and social influence on intention to use travel mobile apps. Regarding sociodemographic, only age has been found statistically significant, e.g. younger respondents tend to use travel mobile apps more than older ones. The results provide implications that would benefit stakeholders in tourism destination as well as mobile app developers to confirm the effectiveness of their marketing and communication strategies and adapt their activities to the needs of a modern tourist.