Study On Tourism Promotional Websites' Evaluation

This research is focused on the development of theoretical knowledge of the tourism websites evaluation.The research is exploratory in nature and is based on the data from the 509 questionnaires filled by Chinese nationals in the time frame from April,2015 to November,2016 in Beijing.For data analysis were used descriptive statistics techniques and multivariate data analysis technique-Factor analysis.Main research findings include:(1)Basing on the available research literature new model for the analysis of the website success was created.New model contains 4 dimensions:External&other factors dimension,Information dimension,System dimension and Service dimension.Tourism website success is represented by two aspects:website's stickiness and website's persuasive power.(2)Factor analysis research reveal two system dimension evaluation factors to measure persuasiveness:"Basic functions" and "Increasing fun factor functions" 5 evaluation factors for measuring website persuasiveness are as follows:"Ease of use minor importance elements","Ease of use important elements","Playfulness elements","Basic technical elements","Additional service supporting elements".(3)Service dimension according to the factor analysis results is divided to 3 evalution factors:"Booking","Communication methods","Information reception channels",which measure both website stickiness and persuasivenss.(4)Basing on factor analysis results Information dimension consists of 6 evaluation factors,measuring stickiness:"Main tourism products' information","Additional travel destination's information","Particular purpose travel's information",and "Accurate content".Website elements of information dimension,measuring website's persuasiveness,have grouped into 7 factors:"Main tourism products' information","Age based tourism information","Multimedia","Informatin on form of travel","Activity tourism","Creative content" and "Useful content".The findings of this research are useful for researchers in the field of website evaluation,particularly tourism website evaluation.Managers of destination management organization's tourism websites and other tourism promoting websites can use the findings for developing more successful websites.