Google Analytics for measuring website performance

Performance measurement of tourism websites is becoming a critical issue for effective online marketing. The aim of this article is to analyse the effectiveness of entries (visit behaviour and length of sessions) depending on their traffic source: direct visit, in-link entries (for instance, en.wikipedia.org), and search engine visits (for example, Google). For this purpose, time series analysis of Google Analytics data is made use of. This method could be interesting for any tourism website optimizer.     

Relationships of Perceived Justice to Service Recovery,Service Failure Attributions,Recovery Satisfaction,and Loyalty in the Context of Airline Travelers

In recent years, hospitality and tourism researchers have presented their findings of many studies on website performance and evaluations. Although these prior studies have achieved a certain degree of success for assisting industrial practitioners to develop and maintain their websites, it remains largely unknown how consumers find a specific travel or hotel website. This paper reports a study that investigated the perceived importance of different channels for finding travel or hotel websites from an international travelers' perspective. Empirical results from 153 travel or hotel website users indicated that the Google search engine was the only channel that was perceived as important, and 47.4% of the respondents viewed up to three screens in the list of search results when using search engines. The paper should be of interest to industrial practitioners and academic researchers to understand better the behavior of users of travel and hotel websites during their website search procedure.     

Exploring Content and Design Factors Associated with Convention and Visitors Bureau Web Site Development

Abstract

Convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) have become important organizations within the tourism industry. The International Association of Convention & Visitor Bureaus (IACVB) reported that it represents approximately 500 destination management organizations in 30 countries (IACVB, 2003). As one of the most important components of the tourism industry in the United States, the Convention and Visitors Bureau performs various activities to facilitate destination marketing and development, with the aim of enticing leisure and convention customers to their particular city or region. Meanwhile, meeting planners are using technology to enhance their ability to produce and execute meetings that demonstrate a high return on investment. Consequently, CVBs' websites have enormous potential in selling a destination and facilitating the meeting/convention planning process. This paper explores the content and design factors associated with convention and visitors bureau web site development. It also demonstrates how planners utilize the Internet and CVB websites.     

Role of social media in online travel information search

Social media are playing an increasingly important role as information sources for travelers. The goal of this study is to investigate the extent to which social media appear in search engine results in the context of travel-related searches. The study employed a research design that simulates a traveler's use of a search engine for travel planning by using a set of pre-defined keywords in combination with nine U.S. tourist destination names. The analysis of the search results showed that social media constitute a substantial part of the search results, indicating that search engines likely direct travelers to social media sites. This study confirms the growing importance of social media in the online tourism domain. It also provides evidence for challenges faced by traditional providers of travel-related information. Implications for tourism marketers in terms of online marketing strategies are discussed.     

Benchmarking CVB website performance: Spatial and structural patterns

This study evaluated 967 U.S. CVB websites using a modified Balanced Scorecard (mBSC) approach which assesses website performance with respect to overall technical functionality, customer friendliness and usability, effectiveness of marketing the destination, and information content. Spatial maps were constructed for these four dimensions and overall CVB website performance using ArcMap v.9.2 GIS software. A structural pattern of CVB website performance was obtained using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). It was concluded that CVB websites primarily need improvement in marketing the destination product. The analysis revealed significant differences in website performance between members and non-members of Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) as well as regional differences. Study implications for destination marketing organizations and CVB website designers are discussed.     

Travel queries on cities in the United States: Implications for search engine marketing for tourist destinations

Given the growing importance of search in online travel planning, marketers need to better understand the behavioural aspect of search engines use. Built upon a number of previous studies, the goal of this research is to identify patterns in online travel queries across tourist destinations. Utilizing transaction log files from a number of search engines, the analysis shows important patterns in the way travel queries are constructed as well as the commonalities and differences in travel queries about different cities in the United States. The ratio of travel queries among all queries about a specific city seems to associate with the “touristic” level of that city. Also, keywords in travelers' queries reflect their knowledge about the city and its competitors. This paper offers insights into the way tourism destinations are searched online as well as implications for search engine marketing for destinations.     

Network Analysis of Navigation Paths of Tourists’ Trip Planning and Power Structure of the Online Tourism in China

In order to investigate the power structure of the online tourism domain in China, this study adopted a lab experiment and a network analysis method to examine the navigational paths of vacation planning behavior of Chinese college students. The analyses included the websites involved in the information search, network statistics of navigational paths, and clickthrough patterns between different types of websites. The navigational path network is a small-world network with shorter average path lengths and shorter network diameter than a web hyperlink network. The tourists generally followed a path of starting web page, general search engines, Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), and finally a specific business website. The clickthrough pattern indicated that search engines and OTAs were major intermediaries and thus exerted a higher power in the online tourism domain in China.     

目的地开发的市场问题

目的地的市场行为已越来越成为激烈的全球范围内的竞争行为。本文解释了与目的地有关的一些概念,并介绍了几个关于目的地管理和市场策略的理论模型。通过几个模型的综合运用分析,作者强调了目的地市场行为中产品细分,公共部门和私有部门合作,以及协调各利益集团物关系和当地资源可持续性利用的重要性。此外,作者还指出新技术和互联网络也是提高目的地竞争力的一种有效方式。总之,目的地的市场行为应突出优化旅游业影响和保证目的地各方获利的原则。     

Using Local Cuisines when Promoting Small Caribbean Island Destinations

This study compares how four Caribbean small islands—Aruba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Martinique—use their authentic cuisines to promote their destinations. Brochures, catalogs, websites, and other promotional materials for each destination were content analyzed. Although all four destinations seem to use their authentic cuisines for tourism promotion, key differences exist among these islands in their marketing and promotional strategies. Martinique appears to use its local cuisine most aggressively, using a combination of locally prepared foods, cocktails, rum, fruits, and vegetables to visually portray this aspect of the country's heritage. Jamaica, in contrast, uses mainly fruit and vegetable imagery. The study findings suggest a need for these four Caribbean island destinations to develop expertise in culinary tourism, followed by promotion through brochures, catalogs, websites, and other marketing materials.     

Disability,social inclusion and the marketing of tourist attractions

The participation of persons with a disability (PWDs) in tourism has received growing academic interest in recent years. This paper contributes to a reflection on how accessible tourism relates to the sustainable development paradigm. To investigate this relationship, it goes beyond the question of PWDs’ access to tourism services, and adopts an inclusiveness perspective. Inclusion is examined in terms of legislation, marketing and imagery, and representations of PWDs as consumers embedded within social units – and families in particular. These dimensions are explored empirically in a study of visitor attractions in Cornwall (England) based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of brochures and websites. The study shows that the marketing materials of Cornish visitor attractions mainly focus on access, and the imagery used largely projects quasi invisibility or provides ambiguous messages. Communication with PWDs rarely addresses the family unit, making the family tourism experience intangible in the pre-trip phase. These results point at weaker implementation of inclusiveness, which corroborates previous findings of watered down definitions of rights to tourism under neo-liberal ideologies and economic crises. The paper discusses implications for social inclusion and highlights avenues for future research.     

What Is the Priority of Research in the Marketing and Promotional Efforts of Convention and Visitors Bureaus in the United States?

Abstract

A convention and visitors bureau (CVB) is the primary tourism marketing organization for cities and counties throughout the United States. A step in the process of planning and managing marketing is research: assessing or analyzing marketing and evaluating marketing efforts. The purpose of this study was to describe the priority of the research managed by CVBs by examining the types of research being conducted, the individuals conducting the research, and their research situation at the bureaus. A survey instrument was designed, tested, and implemented with 153 respondents being used in the analysis. It was found that total budgets averaged approximately $10 million with the research budget ranging from $5,000 to $49,000. The research managed by the respondent is primarily conducted by the CVB, but ten percent or less time is spent on research. Research was seen as important and essential to making the CVB more productive, but the bureaus do not seem to be putting time and money into research and not enough is being completed. The implications of these results have ramifications to many constituencies as studies are inconsistent and standardization is nonexistent. There is opportunity for leadership in creating a wide data base, form, and forum for coordination of tourism research.     

Possible marketing tools for heritage tourism: the potential of implementing information and communication technology

The prevalence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has major marketing impacts on both the demand and the supply side in cultural and heritage tourism. However, while there is quite substantial research on how ICTs affect visitors and their experiences, little can be found in the literature on the supply side. The purpose of our study is to fill this gap. To do so, we executed in-depth interviews with 20 experts from cultural and heritage tourism in Germany. Through the interviews we gained evidence from the supply side on five discourses, which evolve around the issues of the shift in visitor typologies and demand, marketing benefits of digital technologies, preconditions and barriers of implementation and currently relevant technologies. All in all, the results clearly increase our understanding on what experts think on the implementation and use of ICTs in cultural and heritage tourism. Recommendations for practice regarding, for example, cooperation and professionalization and for further research conclude our analysis.     

国外旅游目的地营销研究综述

本文对国外旅游目的地营销研究进行综述.近10年来国外研究主要涉及旅游目的地形象、旅游目的地营销组织、旅游目的地促销、信息技术与目的地营销4大方面.文章在简要评述我国旅游目的地营销研究现状的基础上,结合国外研究情况,认为强化实证研究及定量分析、旅游目的地品牌及定位研究、旅游目的地营销组织、信息技术的促进作用和旅游目的地营销绩效评价应是我国近期旅游目的地营销研究的主要方向.     

ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF INTERNET HOTEL MARKETING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Despite the continuously increasing number of published work on the use of the Internet in tourism and hospitality literature, little has been written specifically on issues faced by hoteliers in developing countries and how they could learn from other successful practices. Indeed, analyzing the well performing destinations would provide useful insights for hoteliers in less performing counterparts around the world so as to better exploit the advantages of Internet technologies within their own constraints. Using Northern Cyprus and Hong Kong as examples, this study attempts first to find out the typical issues and usage of Internet marketing in a less developed tourist destination—Northern Cyprus, and compare the Internet‐related practices carried out by hotels in another well developed tourist destination—Hong Kong. A set of self‐administered questionnaires were mailed to members of major hotel associations in both locations. Results revealed that hoteliers in Hong Kong used the services of professionals in designing their websites and launched their websites before their Cypriot counterparts. A discussion of the findings, implications, and limitations are also given.     

Tourism in India: Policy pitfalls

Tourism destination marketing is now widely recognized as an essential component in the management of destinations. In harmony with the general marketing literature, which understands marketing as a management tool, some researchers understand destination marketing as a form of ‘market-oriented strategic planning’ and hence as a strategic approach to place development rather than a promotional tool. Based on the results of a case study of tourism destination marketing in the Nelson/Tasman Region, New Zealand, this article examines the suitability of tourism destination marketing as a tool and of Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO) as a vehicle for tourism destination management and development. A discussion of several difficulties in the implementation of tourism destination marketing in Nelson/Tasman Region leads to the conclusion that DMOs are unlikely to be able to claim too much responsibility for destination management but that they can play an important part in the management of the destination product.     

Corporate social marketing in tourism: to sleep or not to sleep with the enemy?

ABSTRACT

Social marketing is regarded as an effective consumer-oriented approach to promoting behavioural change and improved well-being for individuals, communities and society. However, its potential for tourism, especially sustainable tourism, remains under-researched. This article examines the utilisation of social marketing by tourism businesses. A search strategy identified 14 behavioural change programmes that involved tourism businesses. Half of these programmes label themselves social marketing; the others tend to be part of corporate social responsibility efforts, using a form of corporate social marketing (CSM). Most programmes seek to encourage pro-environmental behaviours in tourists, tourism businesses and other stakeholders including suppliers. Although tourism businesses can develop social marketing programmes alone, typically they collaborate with public and non-profit agencies as partners and sponsors. The strength of the tie between the promoted behaviour and the sale of a company's product varies considerably. It is suggested that social marketing can make significant contributions to environmentally sustainable tourism. However, this research also suggests that social marketing is not a substitute for, but rather an essential complement to, technological and regulatory approaches to climate change. Changing behaviour is a long process: without a long-term commitment from private sector companies, CSM programmes will fail to achieve behavioural change goals.     

Targeting Rural Tourists in the Internet: Comparing Travel Motivation and Activity-Based Segments

This study aims to compare activity-based segmentation and travel motivation segmentation from the perspective of information search behavior and online use behavior by comparing segment heterogeneity. The data were collected from users of three Finnish rural tourism websites with 1754 completed and usable questionnaires to create segmentation solutions based on travel activities and motivations using hierarchical cluster analysis and then comparing the results. The results indicate that travel activities are more useful than travel motivations in finding heterogeneous segmentation solutions, making the travel activity segments more heterogeneous than travel motivation segments as regards their information search behavior and Internet use. The results suggest that in this era of Internet marketing, travel activities are a better segmentation base than travel motivations in order to target different market segments as activities form more heterogeneous segmentation solutions.     

网络旅游消费者参与心理与行为的实证研究

互联网技术在全球的迅猛发展为网络与旅游的结合提供了重要的基础,并为现代旅游业开启了一个崭新的时代。网络旅游作为一种日益兴盛的现代旅游方式,已经成为旅游业信息化发展的重要表现形式之一,同时也是当今世界旅游业发展的重要方向。因此,了解和分析消费者网络旅游参与的心理和行为对旅游企业的营销和管理也变得越来越关键。然而,现有网络旅游研究主要探讨旅游网络消费者参与行为的特征,对旅游网站特性影响作用、网络旅游消费者参与动机、参与过程和参与心理机制的研究深度还不够。为了揭示现阶段我国旅游网站特性对网络旅游消费者参与心理和最终参与行为的影响作用,该研究在充分总结有关研究的基础上,构建了网络旅游消费者参与心理和行为的概念模型,随后对参与到旅游网站中的397名消费者进行调查分析。研究结果发现:旅游网站的熟悉度和服务规范度会有效影响消费者参与心理的自我决定需求,进而对消费者参与旅游网站的感知卷入和信息搜寻行为产生影响作用。研究结论建议,旅游网站吸引消费者参与的同时需要切实提高企业的品牌知名度和服务规范度,这是进一步提高网络旅游消费者对网站忠诚度的重要基础。     

旅游景区事件营销误区透析——以飞机再次穿越天门洞为例

目前,国内外已有许多文献对事件旅游进行了研究,但对于旅游景区事件营销策划的研究较少.本文以飞机再次穿越天门洞的具体实例为出发点,采用经济学的视角分析了旅游景区事件营销产生的背景及原因,对此次景区事件营销的误区进行了深入分析,并指出了景区事件营销的真正出路.     

Government websites for promoting East Asian culinary tourism: A cross-national analysis

The content of government tourism websites is very important for promoting a tourist destination's exciting cuisine and food culture. These websites help to shape a country's, region's or locality's culinary-cultural image; they create a virtual experience for culinary tourists. This study explores the contents of the cuisine and gastronomy websites of Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, analyzing the techniques used to introduce and promote these East Asian tourist destinations' cuisine and food culture. Specifically, the researchers examined the capacity of government websites to introduce and advertise traditional and local foods, restaurants, gastronomic tours, recipes and culinary cultures (including table manners and other dining customs). They also looked more generally at culinary tourism marketing strategies, including the use of restaurant guides and certifications.