| Summary: | Social media nowadays have a huge influence on the tourism sector. With the advancement of
search engines, tourists can search for any information they need on their tourism preferences.
Today, there are tons of social media websites (such as TripAdvisor, Trivago, Booking.com,
Agoda.com) that can help the tourist to find and decide the best tourism places and activities around
the world. Studies have shown that social media is one of the best tools that are used by a tourist in
the decision-making process. This paper is written to have a better understanding and to find a gap
in the studies related to this topic. Hence, this paper focuses on conceptual review using a
systematic review based on 24 published journals and theses from 2015 to 2019 on the influence of
social media and its impact on the decision-making process for the tourist. Based on the findings, the
majority of the scholars supported that social media have a big impact on how people make the
decision for their tourism destination. The gaps that derived from this review have proven that only
limited studies have been conducted in Malaysia; most of the research used a quantitative
approach; only a few studies have included the theory related to this issue, and the targeted
respondents were mostly among young travellers. Therefore, further studies on the role of social
media in the decision-making process can be done by focusing on these gaps, especially in the
Malaysian context.
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