Finally launching my research website was exciting and scary at the same time. Will I get enough participants? What do I do if discussions don’t flow? Well, it wasn’t as easy as some people predicted. I attracted around a dozen participants, however, only a few were active and participated in the discussions. Also, I found it quite difficult to make them talk about tourism related issues, which obviously shows, that tourism is not the first thing that comes to mind when talking about climate change.

In order to attract more people I created a Facebook page and became active on Twitter. I gained around 60 new Facebook friends, 40 people ‘Like’ my Facebook page, and more than 200 people followed my tweets on Twitter. Although people seem to be interested in the topic, talking about it on my research website was another thing. What might be the reason for this? Are most people on social media sites silent lurkers rather then active participants? If anyone has an answer or idea, please let me know.

The contributions on my website during the first stage concentrated on general issues related to climate change, from pollution to general beliefs. But what do people think about climate change and travelling? And how does climate change influence travel decisions? Or is the fact that people don’t really relate travelling to climate change issue a finding in itself? Not sure, and I still want to explore it a little bit further. More changes to the website!