Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Volume 4: Tourism‐Marketing Performance Metrics and Usefulness Auditing of Destination Websites

Citation

Ip, C. and Law, R. (2011), "Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Volume 4: Tourism‐Marketing Performance Metrics and Usefulness Auditing of Destination Websites", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 410-412. https://doi.org/10.1108/09596111111122569

The present hospitality and tourism industries have experienced unprecedented competitions among different destinations. Tourism marketing and advertisements are generally considered as important ways to draw the attention of travellers worldwide. This, in turn, renders the development of effective marketing and advertising programs as an essential strategy in most, if not all, hospitality and tourism businesses. In particular, practitioners would like to know the influence of their advertising and marketing campaigns that lead to tourist visitation, and thus their resultant expenditures. In response to such a need, tourism‐marketing performance metrics and consumer‐generated advertisements are introduced in the book. In addition, with the wide range of internet applications to hospitality and tourism, business practices, strategies as well as industry structures have been, and will likely be, dramatically revolutionised. Websites can serve as an effective and influential tool in hospitality and tourism that facilitates information sharing and communication. To address this issue, the concept of website usefulness was introduced as a successful website should take customers' interests and participations into consideration, capture information about their preferences, and subsequently use the information to provide personalised communications and services. In view of these arising challenges, the introduction of the book Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Volume 4 surely makes a contribution to knowledge development on how to use practical metrics to measure the effectiveness of tourism advertising and usefulness of destination marketing websites, which in turn, contributes to building the future maturation of these concepts.

The book comprises eight chapters that were written by authors who are affiliated with institutes in Europe, North America, and Australia, representing some of the major continents in the world. Chapter 1 provides an extensive review of literature on the effectiveness of tourism advertising and marketing as well as the use of performance metrics. Chapters 2 to 6 form the most essential part of the book. These chapters discuss the applications of information usefulness auditing to destination management office (DMO) as well as other tourism‐related websites, and provide practical checklists. To illustrate, chapter 2 examines the extent to which different tourism destination websites, including those in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, provide useful information. The chapter also discusses the performance of the best among the three official tourism websites. In chapter 3, six drivers for high‐user satisfaction of tourism websites are proposed and subsequently applied to Maine, Massachusetts, and New York's tourism websites, with an aim of improving website performance and increasing user satisfaction. Similarly, chapter 4 provides a detailed analysis of three Mediterranean cities' travel websites in Genoa, Marseilles and Valencia. Empirical results indicate that Valencia's tourism website is the best in terms of user friendliness, information timeliness, and appealing visible sensation. Likewise, chapter 5 focuses on the evaluation of website effectiveness by auditing the performance of tourism websites in France, Spain and Portugal. After that, chapter 6 compares four official websites in China, Poland, Russia and Thailand with the performance of the website of Lonely Planet in terms of their quality and quantity of information provision. Similar to chapter 1, chapter 7 studies the impact of consumer‐generated advertisements on visitation. In this chapter, Starbucks and Chipotle are chosen as the study samples. Different from previous chapters, chapter 8 describes and applies the concept of behavioural theory of government‐firm relationship to analyse government's role in shaping China's domestic, inbound, and outbound tourism industries.

With an aim of introducing the concepts and applications of tourism‐marketing performance metrics, usefulness of destination websites and Chinese government's role in tourism, the book is able to meet its primary target of having a wide range of readers from industry, official organisations, education, and research institutes. Moreover, readers with different backgrounds are expected to gain some new insights by reading the book. For instance, readers can learn more about tourism advertising and marketing from chapters 1 and 7. Similarly, for the readers who are interested in destination website evaluation, chapters 2 to 6 would be of their interest as these chapters can help them better understand different approaches on evaluating website effectiveness for different geographical regions. Besides, readers of chapter 8 can know the impact of Chinese government's policies on her tourism industry.

The book is suitable for novice readers who have not received much training on tourism advertising and website evaluation in hospitality and tourism. In addition, the book is easy to understand, and the chapters in the book can provide up‐to‐date information and interesting findings in the area. Readers can refer to other relevant references since appropriate literature in related field is provided at the end of each chapter. Also, the book is easy to read because of the standardised chapter layout and presentation style. Still, some noticeable gaps are found. For instance, “web site” and “website” were inconsistently used, and similar references were found in several chapters. Additionally, the existing tourism literature has a plethora of published articles on website evaluation. However, only a very limited number of these related articles were cited in the chapters. Such an approach would be good for readers in general but experienced researchers could be disappointed with such a dearth of citation of related references. Another noticeable gap is the somewhat unexpected feeling of content similarities. Specifically, although chapters 2 to 6 each covers a different topic and that the chapters analyse different tourism websites, readers will easily have the feeling of similarity in terms of website performance evaluation. Also, it is somewhat unclear for including chapter 8 in this book as it does not seem to have a direct relationship with other chapters.

The book serves as a good reference for industrial practitioners, educators, junior researchers, students and consumers. In particular, chapters 2 to 6 are good cases for practitioners to appreciate how to improve their destination websites and then enhance visitor experience. Similarly, consumers can learn more about the performance of destination websites. Likewise, findings in chapters 1 and 7 can contribute to knowledge development on tourism advertising. Readers can also gain some new insights on how advertisements can impact on visitor satisfaction and experience. The last comment is about the price. Apparently, the book is fairly expensive but considering the wide range of findings that are presented by worldwide authors, it is not unreasonably priced.