2007 Annual International CHRIE Conference & Exposition 471
Although the Mauritius website had an uncluttered layout with easily readable text, it lacked pictures and was rated
low on its use of color. Egypt received the lowest rating in the visual appeal category; its website pages appeared
cluttered and did not have clear and readable text. Across all five websites, the ratings indicate that inappropriate use
of color and lack of visually appealing images resulted in low ratings. Among the six categories, visual appeal
received the second highest ratings indicting that the websites have been developed with a focus on their visual
aspects. However, this category also had the highest standard deviation, indicating that the ratings across the six
websites varied the most in the visual appeal category. With the exception of Singapore, all DMOs could benefit
greatly from competitive benchmarking exercises to improve the visual appeal of their websites. Effectiveness
comprised both market effectiveness and effectiveness in providing trip planner assistance. Market effectiveness
received the lowest rating of all the categories. This implies that there is significant room for improvement in web
marketing by DMOs. Perhaps this is to be expected given the relatively recent use of online media for marketing and
the lack of understanding as to how best to use websites to reach different target segments. Referring back to the
study of Blum and Fallon (2002), they also concluded that the websites of Welsh visitor attractions were not taking
full advantage of the potential of the Internet. Furthermore, when comparing the ratings on visual appeal with those
of market effectiveness, all websites received higher scores on visual appeal. This might suggest that the focus for
these websites has been more on their aesthetics rather than on their marketing potential for attracting travelers.
The navigation of a website is the representation of its information architecture and the mechanism by which
users move around the website (WTO, 2001). According to WTO (2001), good navigation allows the user to answer
the following questions for every page of the site:
•
What site am I on?
•
Where am I in the site?
•
What can I do here?
•
Where can I go from here?
•
Where is the information I am looking for?
Navigation should be as transparent as possible and should positively influence the user's frame of mind
(McMahon, 2005). In the navigation category, the website ratings were surprisingly low. Perhaps these low ratings
can be attributed to the fact that only three of the six websites had a site map or index while two of the websites did
not have a 'home' button available on all pages; such features are typically cited as basic requirements for good
navigation. Failures in the technical aspects of websites are frustrating for users. Such failures cause users to lose
trust in the site and in the organization operating it (WTO, 2005). All websites received relatively high scores in the
technical category. With an average score of 71 and standard deviation of 11.2, it is the highest rated category and
the category with the least dispersion in the ratings. The high scores can be attributed to the fact that all the websites'
elements were compatible with common browsers such as Netscape and Internet Explorer and that there were no bad
links in five out of the six websites. Moreover, the pages downloaded quickly with the maximum time taken by a
website to load being 67.03 seconds. Given the automated tools readily available, this feature of a website is easily
assessed and failures can be quickly identified and corrected. Given Dubai rated lowest in its technical aspects,
DTCM would be well advised to undertake more frequent monitoring of this critical website feature.
The study assessed the popularity of each website. A key indicator of poor popularity is failure to appear on
page 1 of important search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Studies indicate that the majority of Internet
users begin their search for a product or service via a search engine but tend to browse those sites that appear on the
first page. With the exception of Mauritius and Qatar, the other four websites scored 100% in the site popularity
category. The reason for the low number of links for the Mauritius and Qatar websites in search engines might be
outdated or lack of meta keywords.
The focus of this study was competitive benchmarking for tourism destination websites. Dubai was
benchmarked against its main tourism competitors as identified by DTCM. Singapore proved to have the top rated
website outperforming the other sites across all usability categories. Comparing Dubai to Singapore, the biggest gap
between these two websites was in the visual appeal category. Other categories with a large gap include trip planner
assistance, technical management and market effectiveness. However, Dubai and Singapore received the same
ratings on ease of navigation. These performance gaps could be narrowed or eliminated in various ways. Firstly,
DTCM could frequently perform a benchmarking exercise across all features against the Singapore website in order
to understand its strengths and thereby gain insight to improve the Dubai website. Qatar could be used for
