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E-commerce which means buying and selling of goods and services through internet as the medium is one of the ongoing powerful tool for providing information and revenue generating tool for tourism industry. Tourism industry which is growing day by day emerges with lots of demand to be met especially for tourism pioneered states in India. Tourism industry is one of the high priority business applications of e-commerce which fits in Business-to- Consumer (B2C) model globally. Hotel industry which primarily serves the needs of the tourism industry strives to bridge the gap between the competitive edges by satisfying every individual customer. E-commerce websites are the best means of magnetizing the international as well as domestic tourists in any part of the world. Designing and maintaining a customer effective website for information surfing and online booking for accommodation in hotels are the most important ways of customer acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Wide Web has become the primary instrument used by tourists in order to search for information. As a result, tourism websites pertaining to destinations need to be appealing and must convey their brand image in an appropriate, effective manner. However, there is no methodology in place to assess the quality and communicative effectiveness of destination websites that is scientifically sound and universally accepted. The development of such a methodology is one of the tasks we have proposed within the framework of the research project: "New strategies for advertising and promoting Spanish tourism brands online" (CSO2008-02627), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Method: The project team has developed an interdisciplinary, all-embracing analysis template combining certain automated analyses with other qualitative and quantitative ones. The template comprises a total of 12 subject areas and 154 indicators prepared on the basis of contributions from prominent experts in each of the fields of work. This article sets out the analysis methodology drawn up and possible applications are given. Results: The primary aim of the project is to provide an assessment methodology that would make it possible to optimise destination brand websites, thus providing a tool to support the work of public tourism destination managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous studies have identified different factors on hotel website functionality evaluation, the evaluation of the relative importance of these factors has not been empirically determined. This study adopted a sophisticated approach that analyzes the weights of hotel website functionality. This approach involved triangular fuzzy numbers and an analytic hierarchy process to develop a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model which prioritizes the relative importance of hotel website functionality criteria. First, 20 criteria for hotel website functionality evaluation were developed from a literature review and three focus group interviews. After that, a fuzzy AHP approach was used to examine the relative importance of the criteria and sub-criteria of hotel website functionality evaluation. As human judgments are often uncertain and vague, the use of fuzzy set theory, rather than exact numbers, enables us to capture decision-makers' uncertainty. Finally, the results indicated that “Reservation Information” is the most important criterion to hotel website functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews website evaluation studies in the tourism and hospitality fields published between January 1996 and September 2009. A website evaluation framework that includes evaluation by phases, evaluation by features, and evaluation by features and effectiveness is developed. The strengths and weaknesses of each method of evaluation are analyzed, and research gaps and future research directions are explored. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to help tourism organizations enhance customer satisfaction (CS) for their websites and online services, this study develops a two layer supply-demand analysis model for tourism websites CS evaluation. This model is built based on the functionalities of tourism websites, and it mainly focuses on the CS evaluations from successful tourism websites applications. A number of tourism online service websites in Beijing, China, are taken as study cases for measuring and analyzing the supply-demand difference of online services presented in the model. The model can be used in regional tourism management to identify issues regarding the activity characteristics of tourism websites and to obtain suggestions to both customer satisfaction and tourism website provider profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]