Mediating Tourist Experiences: Access to Places via Shared Videos

The emergence of new media using multimedia features has generated a new set of mediators for tourists’ experiences. This study examines two hypotheses regarding the roles that online travel videos play as mediators of tourist experiences. The results confirm that online shared videos can provide mental pleasure to viewers by stimulating fantasies and daydreams, as well as bringing back past travel memories. In addition, the videos act as a narrative transportation, providing access to foreign landscapes and socioscapes.