Tanzania is a popular travel destination for young net-savvy Australians. Picture: Gap Adventures Source: Herald Sun

New research has found young "influencers'' who are active on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter and travel review website Tripadvisor are embracing emerging destinations such as China, Africa and Antarctica.

Older, more conservative travellers continue to flock to New Zealand, Europe and "fly and flop'' holiday spots such as Fiji.

While these places were still popular with Australians of all ages, the Overseas Travel Study by research agency TNS found younger people were increasingly looking for the "next big thing''  - and sharing their experience with others.

"We saw destinations such as Vietnam coming up quite strongly in the past,'' TNS director of travel research Carolyn Childs said.

"These destinations were until quite recently reasonably unexplored, then we saw an explosion of capacity coming into the market with Jetstar and AirAsia X opening these routes up.

"Now there's a perception that certain parts of Vietnam may have become a bit mass market so they're moving on to new destinations.''

While the number of Australians travelling to Antarctica was still relatively small, Ms Childs said the people talking about it were young people who are advocates on social media and blogs.

"Africa is quite sexy for this group at the moment - it's a little bit more confronting as a destination and they can fulfil their desire to influence other people's behaviour and be a leader,'' she said.

But the research found the largest single group of Australians are "functional'' online users, who are older, more conservative, less digitally connected, often affluent and highly loyal.

They are more likely to travel to New Zealand, Europe, Fiji and the Pacific Islands.

The research found the USA and Canada have also shown strong growth in visitation thanks to the strong Australian dollar and more airlines flying there.

Ms Childs said travel has been one of the leading categories driving social media, with resorts in the United States such as Vail introducing new social media technology which alerts people where their Facebook friends are if they're skiing at the same resort and share information such as the amount of vertical skied that day on social networking sites.