An Exploratory Evaluation of Rural Tourism Websites

Abstract

An evaluation of 50 rural tourism websites in the United States was undertaken using 23 parameters of stickiness drivers. The parameters measured the websites' effectiveness in the three areas of content, interactivity, and promotional value. The study found that rural tourism websites were largely driven by vertical contents, demonstrated poor interactivity, and had only marginal promotional value in them. Results indicate the need for rural destination-marketing organizations to work closely with neighboring destinations to enhance horizontal content, so that they improve the drawing power of their websites. Also, findings suggest the need for websites to better exploit the interactive capabilities of the Internet to capture tourist imagination in the travel purchase decision-making process.

Key Words:

• Rural tourism
• Internet marketing
• website evaluation
• stickiness
• marketing effectiveness