The Internet has fundamentally reshaped the way tourism-related information is distributed and the way people plan and consume their trips (Buhalis & Law, 2008) . In recent years, online social media (OSM) is creating a tremendous trend on the Internet that is impacting the entire travel and tourism industry. OSM, representing various forms of consumer-generated content (CGC), that is, it can be text, images, video or other digital information published and shared by end users. For example, blogs, virtual communities, wikis, social networks, collaborative tagging, and shared media on sites like YouTube and Flickr have gained popularity in online travelers' use of the Internet (Gretzel, 2006; Pan, MacLaurin and Crotts, 2007). Today, the number of OSM users continues to increase. With over 500 million active users, Facebook is now used by 1 in 13 people on earth, with over 250 million of them logging in every day (digitalbuzzblog, 2011). Additionally, Twitter is home to 175 million users who post an average of one billion tweets per week (Twitter, 2011); YouTube users watch more than 3 billion videos daily (YouTube, 2011); and there are more than 170 million blog users worldwide (BlogPulse, 2011). Therefore, the percentage of OSM users continues to grow; therefore there is potential for further expansion. In other words, people rely on OSM and its use becomes an integral part of their daily lives. In the travel and tourism industry, traveler behavior has always been influenced by developments in information and communication technologies (Buhalis, 1998; Poon, 1993). People tend to search for travel-related information through OSM before planning their trip. According to the Travel Industry Asso... middle of document...... uh, 1997; Jensen, 1996; Nelson, 1992). And the most crucial factor is customer loyalty and satisfaction (Cronin, Brady and Hult, 2000; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001). For this reason, identifying the types of customer value perceived by travelers using social media for travel planning purposes is essential, as they can bring significant functionality to social media in order to improve their web traffic, usage and their competitiveness (Crompvoets, Rajabifard, Bregt and Williamson, 2004). By navigating the OSM, people can engage not only in goal-directed activities, but also in recreational behaviors (Grant et al., 2008; Vogt and Fesenmaier, 1998). By reading other travelers' travel stories, the traveler can feel pleasant and relaxed. An individual can then be immersed in a multitude of information and learn in depth (Hoffman & Novak, 1996).