Principal investigator: Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis
Researcher: Ramona Wagner
Project Summary:
The tourism industry experiences a shift from offline to online travellers. An increasing number of consumers worldwide are not dependent on travel agencies anymore to look for information and inspiration for their next holiday. Instead, consumers make use of the Internet and browse online for inspiration about their potential next holiday destination. This in turn leads to tourism destinations worldwide becoming the focal point of attention for consumers’ decision making process. However, many destinations worldwide struggle with this process as their website presence might still be quite basic.
This project firstly aims to benchmark global destinations with regards to their level of implementation of technologies and applications. Secondly, global best practices for e-destinations will be identified with the help of a detailed content analysis of destinations’ website presence and social media applications. At the same time, the industry perspective about e-destinations will be taken into consideration in order to get an insight into the future and vision for destination management systems and website presence.
By this means, a variety of factors will be analysed that can facilitate the consumers; search on the destination’s websites before, during and after a holiday. A destination’s web presence and social media applications should contain elements that encourage inspire, inform and facilitate at the destination. At the same time consumers should be encouraged to remember, share and engage with the destination. The thesis therefore contains best practice recommendations for destinations’ web presence that could be implemented in order to sustain their future online success.
For further information on the project, please see the PowerPoint presentation and the report on eDestinations below:
Presentation_eDestinations Global best practice in tourism technologies and applications (presented at the National Tourism and Events Excellence (TEE) Conference)
Report_eDestinations Global best practice in tourism technologies and applications
© Professor Dimitrios Buhalis and Ramona Wagner Bournemouth University
This is a report of Bournemouth University to the ATDW. If you would like to use some of the material you will need written consent from Professor Buhalis on dbuhalis@Bourmemouth.ac.uk.