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Tourism Website Evaluation Assessing the website effectiveness of top ten tourist attracting nations

2014, Information Technology and Tourism

Website evaluation has been studied extensively in Information Systems and Tourism literature; but few studies combine information system issues with the Tourist decision making perspective. In this research we evaluate websites on a comprehensive set of criteria, based on five factors of website effectiveness. A Content analysis of official tourism websites of top ten tourist attracting nations was done and data was analysed using Correspondence analysis and weighted mean scores. Findings reveal that websites need to improve on certain factors, the two most important being Security and Responsiveness. In addition to this, websites should include features that support decision making at different stages of travel which would enhance website effectiveness. The study also discusses the implications for tourism organisations for developing websites that create destination image and attract tourists across the globe. The research contributes to the website evaluation approaches by developing a set of criteria using a tourist decision making perspective, rather than only technical, for evaluating website effectiveness. The research employs a novel approach of analysing cross national websites unlike other studies that have generally evaluated websites from a single country.

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Some tourists only have a slight idea of where they want to go on a holiday when planning starts. Such tourists or their travel partners are likely to look for information for making a final travel decision. As the web becomes an increasingly popular information source, tourism destination websites can play a critical role in destination choice. A rubric for comparing tourism websites put forward by Dion and Woodside (2010) is used and ideas for enhancing the rubric are introduced utilizing a growing literature. Comparisons are made for the tourism websites of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Taipei. Analysis involves considering websites' quality and usefulness. The study indicates that Hong Kong's site is best while Beijing has the most room for improvement. The paper concludes with implications of the research for website analysis. The discussion includes contributions to the value of criteria for websites found in the literature but not covered in an information-quali...

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Professor Dimitrios Buhalis

Rob Law *, Shanshan Qi *, Dimitrios Buhalis ** , 2010, Progress in tourism management: A review of website evaluation in tourism research Tourism Management Vol. 31 (3), pp. 297–313 This paper reviews tourism studies published from 1996 to July 2009 that pertain to methodological approaches to website evaluation. The paper analyzes the initial work and continues up to recent developments in website evaluation. In general, prior research can be divided into five evaluation approaches: counting, automated, numerical computation, user judgment, and combined methods. The strengths and weaknesses of each method are examined. Research gaps and opportunities for future studies are discussed.

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Website evaluation methods are an important tool to gather information for the development and the management of a website in order to ensure a good acceptance by the users. Mainly based on detailed questionnaires administered to actual or potential users, this activity can be costly and time consuming. This paper present methods, based on the statistical bootstrapping techniques, to derive confidence intervals for the evaluations produced by a certain sample of users.

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Tourism is a vital economic activity in many countries. Cities, regions, countries and destinations of all categories vie for securing tourists and to do so they employ communication and promotion channels such as official websites. Despite the importance of these websites, no comprehensive method of assessment exists to enable communications managers and directors to find out whether their destination's website is effective and where it ranks in comparison to its competitors. This paper presents a hitherto unseen assessment system aimed at meeting this need. Using a host of indicators, grouped into twelve parameters, a Web Quality Index (WQI) has been specifically established for tourist destination websites which, as well as determining an overall index, makes it possible to draw comparison between parameters or spheres of analysis. The assessment system is illustrated using the result of a pilot sample of official websites from ten destinations to confirm the validity and potential of the model put forward.

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Website Development and Evaluations in Tourism: A Retrospective Analysis

• Conference paper
• Cite this conference paper

• Rob Law 4 &
• Billy Bai 5  

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The present business enterprises largely adopt e-commerce to achieve different business goals, and for this reason, the process of maintaining a high quality and effective website is vital for a business to strengthen its customer relationships and to excel in business transactions. In the context of travel and tourism, the information intensive and customer oriented nature of the industry appears to be particularly suitable for the adoption of e-commerce. Many studies have been reported about tourism enterprises utilizing the Internet for information search, business transactions, and relationship building. This paper reviews the published articles on website development and evaluations in ENTER Conference Proceedings from 2000 to 2005 and the journal Information Technology & Tourism from 2000 to 2004. Findings of the study indicate that not only the importance of analyzing information on websites has long been recognized, but also various approaches have been initiated to evaluate tourism website development. The paper concludes with business implications and future research opportunities.

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School of Hotel & Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften und Informatik, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria

Martin Hitz

School of Business, University of the Aegean, Chios, Greece

Marianna Sigala

School of Business, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia

Jamie Murphy

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Law, R., Bai, B. (2006). Website Development and Evaluations in Tourism: A Retrospective Analysis. In: Hitz, M., Sigala, M., Murphy, J. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2006. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-32710-X_1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-32710-X_1

Publisher Name : Springer, Vienna

Print ISBN : 978-3-211-30987-2

Online ISBN : 978-3-211-32710-4

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