Information usefulness auditing of tourism destination websites: Assessing Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco's performance

Abstract

This chapter reports on how to assess the usefulness of official tourism websites; the study applies for information audit rubrics to assess the marketing websites for three cities in the state of California. The study provides tools that may be useful for designing destination websites to include information that visitors find useful. The three focal cities include Los Angeles (discoverlosangeles.com), San Diego (sandiego.org), and San Francisco (onlyinsanfrancisco.com). One of the hypotheses that the study examines is that destination websites are assessable in order of good, better, best. Findings: San Francisco provides the most useful information and is likely to be the most successful official tourism website. The assessment of San Francisco as the best website is the outcome of applying macro and micro rubrics covering: general and practical information, ability to book a vacation, digital and print materials, use of media components, and partnerships.

Citation

Woolsey, C. (2010), "Information usefulness auditing of tourism destination websites: Assessing Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco's performance", Woodside, A.G. (Ed.) Tourism-Marketing Performance Metrics and Usefulness Auditing of Destination Websites (Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 4), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 15-26. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1871-3173(2010)0000004006