International Centre for Tourism & Hospitality Research (www.bournemouth.ac.uk/studentships) is looking for outstanding applicants who can handle a interesting study about: eTOURISM: SOCIAL NETWORKING ONLINE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TOURISM (WEB 2.0-TRAVEL 2.0)

Great initiative, look at their Background to research:

Online travel communities have increasingly be seen as one of the vital information sources to potential tourists. Some communities such as VirtualTourist.com, Trekshare.com, Lonelyplanet.com, IgoUgo.com, and Tripadvisor.com already play a major role in providing up-to-date destination information from members around world. VirtualTourist.com, one of the most popular and largest online travel communities, has over 800,000 registered members from more than 220 countries. About 1.4 million travel tips on over 25,000 destinations and 2.6 million photos are posted on members' personal pages. About 5 million users visit the community and see 30 million pages every month, leading to high level of participation and sharing plenty of information with members whether they are real travellers or locals. IgoUgo.com is another well-known online travel community with 350,000 members (www.igougo.com [July 1, 2006]). It has about 300,000 travel reviews and 200,000 photos on destinations, hotels and travel products since it has started in June 2000.
The potential of social-networking to provide 'user-generated content' and encourage 'the democratisation of criticism' carries threats as well as opportunities for tourism organisations and DMOs. In marketing terms it is more comparable to PR than to advertising in that you do not have ultimate control over what is said about the product. This project will explore social networking in tourism and will identify the key players and stakeholders. It will then analyse the key aspects of social networking online and the motivations for both consumers and industry. It will explore the different formats of social networking on line and the different users and usages. The project then will examine the value added to each stakeholder from Web 2.0 and the main motivations for participation. The effect of social networking on tourism consumer behaviour as well as the implications for promotional and distribution channels will also be examined. The project should consider the extent to which social-networking can or indeed should be managed or influenced by tourism managers. Finally the challenges and potential benefits for tourism organisations will be identified as well as strategies for dealing with the Web 2.0.
This project should be approached from a multidisciplinary perspective and should be nested in sociology, consumer behaviour and marketing management theory.

More info here

and on the Buhalis blog

My 2 CENTS and thoughts:

Hope the "outstanding applicants" have some experience in blogging, using of travel social network, using Web 2.0 tools, producing user generated content, and more...

What do you think about the study goals, any advice for them !