• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.143-161
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• 2015

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations are a potpourri of diverse religions, races and cultures with rich natural and cultural heritage but yet to tap the full potential of tourism. An investigation into the glorifying heritage of these eight SAARC nations pinpoints towards their rich food and culinary heritage that is yet to be explored to carve them as food destinations that would definitely help ameliorating tourism too. The Global Report on Food Tourism of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) reveals results from a survey on food tourism marketing promotion, from which internet marketing tools, such as websites have been effectively utilized to promote food tourism in a particular destination. (UNWTO, 2012). Sensing the importance of the websites in the promotion of food tourism for any destination, the present study aims at the comparative content analysis of the official tourism websites of SAARC nations to evaluate their performance from the perspective of promotion of culinary heritage on world -wide web. The modified Balanced ScoreCard (BSC) approach is incorporated into the evaluation by taking into consideration four perspectives: technical, user friendliness and site attractiveness, tourism effectiveness and food tourism effectiveness. A set of 88 critical success factors representing these four perspectives is then used to examine the websites. The study reflects on the relative strength and weakness of the tourism websites of SAARC nations in promoting food tourism and as well help suggesting the remedial measures catalyzing the food tourism promotion through websites.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.57-85
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• 2004

To develop an blue tourism website(BTW) for electronic commerce(EC), information requirements of BTW are defined firstly. We defined information requirements of BTW from two aspects, i.e., front office and back office. Information requirements for front office were derived by consumer purchasing decision process. And information requirements for back office were derived by tourism value chain. Total 29 functions are identified as critical EC related functions of BTW. Among them, 25 functions were investigated into BTW. BTWs were searched by search engines - Yahoo and Empas - to Korean websites. There are 12 specialized BTWs, except one cyber museum website. For 12 websites, 25 functions were probed. By the results, in need recognition stage of blue tourism, only weather information was provided in most websites. In information search stage of blue tourism, package recommendation and various contents were provided in most websites. In consumption stage of blue tourism, traffic information were provided in most websites. And in after - sales service stage of blue tourism, bulletin board function was implemented in most websites. The rest of the functions were scarcely implemented. On the whole, it was concluded that most EC related functions of BTW in Korea were not implemented properly. To improve the status quo, it is expected in the dimension of individual website, that marketing planning, customized service, intelligent service, reinforcing purchasing assistance functions, customer relationship management, and escrow service etc. need to be implemented. And it is expected in the dimension of blue tourism industry, that standardizing product catalog, security assistance policy, information sharing by industrial database, finding referral model of BTW, elevating information mind, revising related laws etc. are needed.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.5-15
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• 2023

With the growing trend of online global market, customers have further technological capabilities in searching for information and online shopping on the Internet. In addition, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is a significant factor that influences customer purchase intention. However, the perspective of online users on hotel websites is still in its infancy, especially in various cultural contexts. The current study examined a theoretical framework of hotel websites to understand how online users perceive the importance of hotel websites with regard to influencing purchase intention, within the content of Thai online users through an online questionnaire survey. Findings show that usability positively influences online Thai users' satisfaction. Moreover, eWOM has a significant positive influence on satisfaction, but eWOM has an indirect effect on the intention to purchase. Practical implications are further discussed.

• Journal of Information Management
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.88-118
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• 2007

The purpose of this research is to analyze the problems of regional culture and tourism websites and to seek for the ways to improve those websites since the culture and tourism information websites of local government do not provide enough contents and service. This research is based on following 4 indicators, content evaluation, usability evaluation, design evaluation and interactivity evaluation which are used to evaluate tourism homepages of municipality by Korea Tourism Organization. The result of this research came out with the issue that regional cultural tourism websites lack user-oriented contents. Therefore, regional culture and tourism websites need to provide the custom-made information such as setting a free tourist route, complementing reservation system and diversifying the range of search.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.31-38
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• 2022

Understanding demand for travel websites can help hoteliers better evaluate their own multi-channel distribution and reputation management strategies. In this study, we estimated demand for eight major travel websites based on the user percentage in 3,120 U.S. counties. Results highlighted the importance of four types of factors: sociodemographic, economic, Internet use-related, and travel-related. Differences between websites were also compared based on estimated coefficients. For example, the demand for Expedia.com appeared to be driven by age, education background, income, and foreign travel history, whereas the demand for Hotels.com was driven by the proportion of the African American population and domestic travel history. Lastly, implications are provided.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.408-418
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the official medical tourism websites in several countries. We compared the websites of three countries using the 4 criteria(e.g.,contents, convenience, design, interactivity). The evaluation of accessibility and subjective perception were conducted by websites users. Total 77 cases were used for the analysis. For the statistical analysis of data, MANOVA was used. According to the MANOVA analysis, The Malaysia website received the highest mark in accessibility and subjective perception. Each of the evaluations showed a significant difference among countries.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.63-68
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• 2022

Given the competition between different tourist destinations to attract domestic and international tourists it is absolutely vital to examine their website efficacy on specific attributes. This study employs one of the recently developed multi-criteria decision-making method the Best-Worst Method to assess the state government official tourism website across four Indian states known for their tourism potential- Himachal Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on specific attributes provided by the widely acknowledged WebQual instrument. Information Fit-to-Task and Trust emerged as the most important criterion. Relative advantage and Innovation the least important. The results of the study are easily interpretable and visual. They offer both an individual and comparative analysis of the perceived website efficacy on specific attributes to facilitate tourism stakeholders and website administrators to strategize and make their digital presence effective and competitive.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.167-180
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• 2006

Websites in the Internet are uncontrollable domain and various contents in websites lead people's activities and thoughts and new business paradigms for the future. These phenomena are from expanding the social network based on the endless growth of information technology. Websites are composed with many of links and communicating and expanding their virtual area by links, inbound, outbound, onsite, and of offsite links. Research and practice in digital information on the web have focused on finding and measuring artifacts, factors and attributes of web structure and contents from the perspective that information is a resource and property of products and services. Websites links is one of the core artifacts for understanding the virtual area. This study identifies the role of web link structure and webpage keyword as artifacts and examines their relationships by webpage rank by a minimal hub as performance in the business websites that are serving tourism information. Discovering relationships of links provides managerial insights on organizations virtual activities and systematic understandings about digitalized organizational information in the information use environment.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.154-162
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• 2022

Digital marketing tools are actively used in managing the development of park and recreation complexes to familiarize the population with the objects of natural heritage. This article aims to empirically evaluate digital marketing tools for popularizing the park and recreational complexes. The methodology was based on the concept of ecosystem value of park and recreation complexes as a natural heritage site. These methods included: identifying and selecting websites with information about park and recreation complexes in Slovakia and Ukraine. structural analysis of the main channels of online details about natural parks. Assessing the current state of online identity of the studied sites from the perspective of Internet users. The results indicate that to manage the development of park and recreational complexes developed their driven official websites in the Internet space, on which sections structure the information with the allocation of data on tourism and recreational potential. The article identifies additional digital marketing tools for managing the development of park and recreation complexes, particularly social networks and tourist websites. There is a sufficient amount of information about tourist recreation sites within these natural parks and tourist routes. Among the main problems of the websites: the information on the websites is entirely textual, there is a lack of sufficient data on social networks, despite the created official pages, there is no video content, which was more attracted tourists and visitors, allowing a visual assessment of the tourist potential; there is a problem of many communication channels to present the natural heritage of the countries. The research proves that the website is the primary and most common digital marketing tool for natural heritage, structuring information about tourism potential and recreation.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.73-83
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• 2017

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the CSR activities of small enterprises in hospitality and tourism industry in South Korea. Since previous research on CSR activities has considerably focused on large enterprises whereas small enterprises have relatively less attention, this study aims to explore the characteristics of small enterprises in hospitality and tourism industry and their CSR activities. Research design, data, and methodology - The population of interest for this study was social enterprises registered in Korea Social Enterprise Promotion Agency (2016), and it was used to verify the social enterprises which has a certification for social enterprises. From 1672 companies in total, the sampling frame was a database with 117 companies in hospitality and tourism industry. This study investigates social enterprises' CSR activities on the company's official websites (e.g., company reports, magazines, the news articles, and interviews). The websites of the selected enterprises in hospitality and tourism industry were analyzed for examining CSR activities by the quantitative content analysis. All of the CSR activities in small social enterprises were classified into six dimensions based on the stakeholder theory. Results - The findings of this study provide the characteristics of the 117 small social enterprises and their specific CSR initiatives. A total of eight main business lines were identified: 1) fair travel, 2) leisure/sports, 3) accommodation/camping, 4) medical tourism, 5) exhibitions/art events/cultural events, 6) leisure activities for vulnerable social groups, 7) Korean traditional culture, and 8) ecotourism/agricultural tourism. The CSR initiatives were classified into six dimensions: 1) environment, 2) employment, 3) multicultural families and vulnerable social groups, 4) local community, 5) economic prosperity, and 6) product. Conclusions - This study revealed the special CSR initiative examples of small enterprises in hospitality and tourism industry. Small social enterprises participate in CSR activities mainly related to their own business lines. Moreover, these enterprises are more closely embedded in their local community development, job creation and education for local residents and vulnerable social groups, and traditional heritage preservation. The findings of this study provide theoretical and practical implications and they can contribute to enrich CSR with literature for small enterprises in hospitality and tourism industry.