Assessing the website effectiveness of top ten tourist attracting nations

Abstract

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.