An evaluation of tourism destination website quality and image projection effectiveness

The Internet has changed the way the tourism industry operates. It has provided potentialtourists with an efficient way to gather information about destinations, to plan trips to thelast detail and to make reservations from the comfort of their homes. It has also providedDestination Management Organisations (DMOs) with an effective communicationsmedium and a new distribution channel. Tourism website quality is therefore a key issue.Whilst there is an increasing body of literature concerned with measuring website qualityfrom a consumer perspective, the analysis of tourism website performance, particularlycomparative analyses of competing tourism destination websites, has been neglected.Moreover, even though the importance of destination image in influencing touristbehaviour has received wide acknowledgement in the tourism literature, little research hasbeen conducted on destination image projection via the Internet. This study addresses thisgap in the literature by focussing on tourism website quality and destination imageprojection. It specifically deals with the measurement of tourism website quality from auser perspective and is concerned with the role of the website in tourism decisionsregarding destination choice. The research examines the relationship between the qualityof the tourism website experience, user satisfaction and future behavioural intention inrelation to both tourism websites and their respective destinations. It does this through acomparative analysis of three European countries' official tourism websites, France, Spainand Croatia. The study assesses user perceptions of website attribute importance andperformance. It also compares the websites in terms of the effectiveness of theirdestination image projection with respect to user word-of-mouth promotion and futurevisitation to both the site and the destination. As such, the study makes a contribution totourism theory and destination marketing practice.A number of gaps were identified in the literature and these underpinned the Hypotheses.Hypothesis 1 states that consumer perceptions of the website will be significantlyinfluenced by a) previous visits to the website, b) to the destination and c) consumerdemographics. Hypothesis 2 states that competitor websites will significantly influencethe consumer perceptions of the website. Hypothesis 3 states that the "performance -only" model of website quality will explain significantly more of the variance in perceivedquality than the "importance - performance" model. Hypothesis 4 follows the establishedmodel of previous empirical research and proposes that perceived website quality willinfluence visitor satisfaction with the website. Hypothesis 5, in turn, proposes thatperceived website quality will significantly influence consumer intention to a) recommendand b) visit or re/visit the website. Hypothesis 6 states that the perceived quality of thewebsite will change consumer attitudes towards the destination in a positive way. Finally,Hypothesis 7 argues that the images of a destination found on the website will motivateconsumers to visit or re/visit the destination. All hypotheses were supported.The findings confirmed that the Internet is the most popular way of findings tourisminformation, followed by word - of - mouth. The findings also demonstrated that therespondents showed a reluctance to visit the official tourism destination websites,preferring instead more objective websites. The respondents also showed a reluctance tobook their holidays through the official tourism destination websites.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral (Level 8)

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Efthymiou, K

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1338096

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1338096