Exploring rural tourism and sustainability in Southeast Asia through the lenses of official tourism websites

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to report the findings of a benchmarking exercise among official tourism websites of five Southeast Asian countries. website benchmarking, namely, a strategy used to evaluate and compare website quality, has been widely used within the context of tourism studies. Yet there is a relative lack of information concerning best practices for official tourism websites as a form of promoting rural tourism and sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – By using a qualitative approach, a group of six tourism researchers were invited to evaluate official tourism websites of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines for user-friendliness, site attractiveness, marketing attractiveness and provision of information on rural tourism and sustainability. Findings – Overall, the evaluations provided by the researchers indicated that in general, the Indonesian and Malaysian websites were always perceived as the best options compared to the Thai, Philippine and Vietna...