A review of website evaluation studies in the tourism and hospitality fields from 1996 to 2009

Abstract

(Buhalis and Law, 2008). Business practices, strategies and industry structures have been transformed by the development of such technologies (Porter, 2001). The establishment of the Internet in the 1990s has provided researchers with the opportunity to examine the use of Internet applications in the tourism and hospitality industries . The Internet, the most infl uential ICT, serves as an effective marketing and communication strategy for both suppliers and consumers, and facilitates information sharing, communication and online shopping (O'Connor, 2004). The continuous increase in the number of Internet users is evidence of the popularity of this technology, and hospitality and tourism practitioners are increasingly devoting time and effort to their websites to develop and maintain customer relationships and enlarge their market share .The development of ICTs has not only had an impact on the tourism and hospitality industries, but also on academe. Researchers recognized the importance of websites to these industries early on, and the literature thus contains numerous studies exploring related issues. Lu and Yeung (1998) were pioneers in this arena, proposing a framework for evaluating website performance based on functionality and usability. A well-defi ned model of website evaluation, however, remains lacking. The website evaluations in previous studies can generally be classifi ed into two main streams: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research usually employs performance indices or scores to represent overall website quality; whereas qualitative research evaluates website quality without the use of numerical scores or indices.The importance of research in the tourism and hospitality industries has long been recognized (Law and Chon, 2007 devoted substantial research efforts to discovering innovations and helping industry practitioners apply their fi ndings. As such, there is a strong relationship between academic fi ndings and industry practice in these fi elds, with tourism and hospitality practitioners applying such fi ndings to improve operational practices. More recently, both academic and industry attentions have turned to tourism/hospitality website evaluation , and a number of reviews of the use of ICT in these fi elds have been published. Frew (2000) Neither study therefore provides a comprehensive overview of this type of research. Further, the study carried out by Buhalis and Law (2008) was intended only to provide a general review of ICT use in tourism. The study reported herein was designed to provide an up to date and comprehensive review of website evaluation in previous tourism and hospitality research, and to explore existing research gaps and directions for future research. As Han and Mills (2006) stated that the use of the Web in hospitality and tourism began only in 1995, this study thus reviewed articles published from January 1996 to September 2009. METHODOLOGYThis study reviewed 68 website evaluation studies related to travel/tourism and hospitality that were published betw...

Online travel purchasing: A literature review

“…overall quality of a website and do not relate the website evaluation with the purchase of travel online. Thus, research regarding website quality should go beyond simply ascertaining whether certain website dimensions/attributes are present to considering which dimensions/attributes have the greatest impact and consumer intentions to purchase (Ip et al, 2011). The majority of the studies focus on travel products without distinguishing specific product categories.…”

“…Furthermore, to guarantee that other relevant articles from peer-reviewed journals were not excluded from this review, online databases for academic journals were also used. Using online databases to search for suitable articles for a literature review is a procedure that has been conducted by other well-known authors (e.g., Buhalis & Law, 2008;Ip, Law, & Lee, 2011).…”

“…google.com) were used to search for suitable articles. These are considered to be the largest and most popular databases (Ip et al, 2011;Ryan, 2005). The keywords used for this search included different word combinations related to online travel shopping such as "travel shopping online," "travel e-commerce," and "e-travelers purchasing behavior.…”

“…Despite the growing body of literature about website quality assessment in the tourism and hospitality fields (see Ip et al, 2011;Law, Qi, & Buhalis 2010), there is still a lack of research regarding the relationship between website quality and online consumers' behavior . Indeed, few studies establish a relationship between website characteristics and intentions to purchase travel online or actual usage.…”

An Analysis of the Key Factors Affecting the Success of a Re-Launched Destination Marketing Website in the UK

“…The survey questions were based on key literature in the area and drew on some of the findings identified in a review of tourism website evaluations by Ip et al (2011), relating to usability factors. Over the past 5 years trust (or lack of it) has been highlighted as a key factor influencing the purchase of holidays online and even cited as a factor that could impede growth (Choi & Au, 2011).…”