From On-Demand Audio to Destination Influence - PODCAST PAPERS - PODCAST PAPERS
From On-Demand Audio to Destination Influence
Audio content marketing is attracting growing interest in digital consumer behavior, with clear implications for tourism. Destination marketing matters because it helps shape a destination’s image—how listeners perceive a place—and podcasts provide a flexible, personal, on-demand way to encounter that message. Yet the practical question is sharper: can listening to a destination’s podcast change not only what people think about a place, but also whether they intend to visit it?
A 2025 study by Stadler, Bosio, and Loderer examines this issue using a destination-marketing organization’s podcast stimulus. Listeners rated the destination before and after listening; their perceived image improved, and this positively influenced their travel intentions. The findings position podcasts as a potential addition to destination marketing, while also highlighting the operational effort required [1].
To interpret their influence, it helps to treat podcasts as more than radio delivered through a phone. Early accounts describe podcasting as an accessible, portable way for anyone with a computer to create and distribute a radio-like program to listeners using portable MP3 players [8]. Later work defines the medium around episodic audio—programs released in separate installments—that is convenient to produce and experience on demand [6]. Research therefore presents podcasting as a distinct medium, not simply a mobile extension of radio, with listening shaped by motivations, settings, routines, and competing audio options [3].
Listeners seek entertainment and information, but also timeshifting (choosing when to listen), platform advantages, library building, and social interaction around shows and their fan communities [2][3]. Portable devices and flexible access can also accommodate listening alongside other activities [2][4][7]. These qualities support both broad exposure and targeted use: residents in professional education described podcasts as engaging learning tools that could introduce core content while serving personalized needs . Independent producers and fan networks illustrate podcasting’s community dimension, while medical podcasts show how it can support professional learning and wider communities .
Note on AI-generated content
1. The statement that “medical podcasts show how it can support professional learning and wider communities” is not established by the cited abstracts. Reference [11] reports the growth of emergency-medicine and critical-care blogs and podcasts, but does not demonstrate learning or community outcomes; reference [9] concerns independent podcasters generally, not medical podcasts.
2. The claim that podcasts offer “personal communication that may help build trust” is not supported by the cited abstracts [3][4][6]. The trust evidence appears only in [15] and concerns listeners’ trust in news content by podcast genre, not podcasting’s general personal communication or trust-building effects.
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The same flexibility creates constraints. Distracted or context-dependent listening may make retention and practical application difficult [4]. Production demands, audio quality, episode duration, listener experience, measurement, and monetization remain challenges [7]. Podcasting’s relationship with radio also requires continued clarification [3][8]. Thus, podcasts can inform, entertain, connect, and offer personal communication that may help build trust—but effects depend on listeners’ motivations and circumstances, the content itself, and how the medium is designed [3][4][6].
That broader picture becomes a focused tourism test in Stadler, Bosio, and Loderer’s study. Rather than asking only why people listen to podcasts or how audio supports learning, the researchers examine whether a podcast operated by a destination-marketing organization can shape two tourism outcomes: destination image and intention to travel [1]. Destination image means the overall way a person perceives and evaluates a place; travel intention means the person’s stated likelihood or willingness to visit.
The researchers collected quantitative data through an online questionnaire with 413 participants. First, participants rated the destination’s image and their travel intention. They then listened to a podcast stimulus—the audio example used in the study—and rated both measures again. This before-and-after design allowed the researchers to compare perceptions and intentions following exposure to the destination podcast [1].
The central result was that participants reported a better perceived image of the destination after listening than before. The improved image also positively influenced their travel intentions: as the destination was perceived more favorably, participants’ intention to travel was stronger [1]. The study therefore connects a destination organization’s podcast with both how listeners think about a place and whether they may want to visit it, rather than examining podcast use, production, learning, or trust in isolation.
The authors nonetheless qualify this opportunity. Destination podcasts may complement existing destination-marketing strategies, but using them effectively requires operational effort. The format can contribute to marketing goals, yet it is not presented as a cost-free or automatic route to visitor interest [1].
Later research broadens the question from whether a destination podcast changes perceptions to why people listen, engage, and recommend audio. A 2024 study of educational professionals developed and validated a motivation scale—a tested tool for measuring the reasons behind media use—with five dimensions: information gathering, flexibility in use, social interaction, entertainment, and professional encouragement. Several of these motivations were associated with listening intention and word-of-mouth, or recommending a podcast to others [12]. Research with young audiences in the United Arab Emirates similarly examines entertainment, information acquisition, community interaction, multitasking, accessibility, and engagement across podcast genres, presenting podcasting as both interactive and adaptable [16].
Applied studies show how these motivations can shape practical design. In higher education, short, five- to ten-minute episodes were used as supplemental, on-demand material alongside assigned readings. Survey responses and download statistics were sufficiently positive to support continuing the low-cost initiative, and the authors describe a production process that others can adapt [17]. A review of 320 Spanish- and Portuguese-language publications likewise finds growing, multidisciplinary interest, with educational uses particularly prominent [13].
Other work sharpens the medium’s identity and persuasive conditions. Media theory describes podcasting as a “remediation” of radio: a reworking of an earlier medium that also incorporates networked communication, such as digital connectivity and audience interaction [14]. Trust research adds that confidence in news can vary by podcast genre; listeners generally trust news podcasts, while some also trust news carried within non-news formats, including comedy and history [15]. Together, these developments move podcast research toward more precise measures of motivation, intention, interaction, trust, medium identity, and applied use. They also preserve the practical concern raised by destination research: whether listening can influence the judgments, recommendations, and future decisions that matter beyond the episode itself.
Taken together, these papers portray podcasts as more than a delivery channel: they are flexible, on-demand, socially connected, and able to combine information with storytelling [2][3][6][14]. The destination-marketing study adds a concrete outcome: after listening, participants reported a better destination image—how they perceived the place—and stronger travel intentions, or willingness to visit [1]. Yet the wider literature shows that effectiveness depends on listening conditions, audience motives, content and genre, and the work required to produce and evaluate episodes [3][4][7][12][15][17]. Measurement and monetization challenges also remain [7]. For destination organizations, the practical lesson is therefore cautious optimism: podcasts may complement other marketing, but their value should be judged against production effort and evidence of how audiences actually respond [1][7][12].
— Jeff Riddell, Lynne Robins, Alisha Brown, Jonathan Sherbino, Michelle Lin, Jonathan S. Ilgen (2019)