Content uploaded by Bing Pan
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Bing Pan
Content may be subject to copyright.
Content uploaded by Bing Pan
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Bing Pan
Content may be subject to copyright.
Content uploaded by Bing Pan
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Bing Pan
Content may be subject to copyright.
A TYPLOGY OF TOURISM RELATED WEB SITES: ITS THEORETICAL
BACKGOUND AND IMPLICATIONS
1
A TYPLOGY OF TOURISM RELATED WEB SITES: ITS THEORETICAL
BACKGOUND AND IMPLICATIONS
Bing Pan
eKnowledge Group
National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce
Department of Leisure Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Mailing Address:
104 Huff Hall
1206 S. Fourth St.
Champaign, IL 61820
Tel: +1-217-333-1522
Fax: +1-217-244-1935
Email: bingpan@uiuc.edu
Daniel R. Fesenmaier
National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce
Department of Leisure Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Mailing Address:
104 Huff Hall
1206 S. Fourth St.
Champaign, IL 61820
Tel: +1-217-244-3891
Fax: +1-217-244-1935
Email: drfez@uiuc.edu
January 6, 2001
2
A TYPLOGY OF TOURISM RELATED WEB SITES: ITS THEORETICAL
BACKGOUND AND IMPLICATIONS
Abstract
The application of information technology especially the Internet is changing our way of
life and doing business, particularly in the tourism area. A well-defined typology is
necessary both to clarify the structure of the online tourism domain, to facilitate the
information search process of various Internet users in the tourism area, and to provide
appropriate strategies for the development of different types of tourism related web sites.
After an analysis of the nature of information, the authors advance a typology of tourism
related web sites based on the information communication between different information
users in tourism. The implications of this typology for tourism research and tourism-
related web site development are discussed.
Keywords: Internet, tourism, typology, information, richness, user analysis
3
A TYPLOGY OF TOURISM RELATED WEB SITES: ITS THEORETICAL
BACKGOUND AND IMPLICATIONS
Background
Undoubtedly, information technology, especially the Internet, has changed and continues
to change the nature of the tourism industry (Werthner and Klein, 1999). According to Forrester
Research, 17 million US households were shopping online during 1999, and by 2004, retail sales
will reach $184 billion (Forrester Research, 1999). Compared with other industries, tourism has
become the most important sector in terms of the volume of sales and online transactions
(Werthner & Klein, 1999). Most tourism organizations have already gained Internet presence
including both commercial and non-commercial organizations (Yuan and Fesenmaier, 2000).
Also, there is a substantial increase in the number of web sites devoted to tourism research and
administration. This growth in the number of tourism-related web sites and the functions each
web site can provide implies that the World Wide Web (WWW) has become an important part of
the tourism industry and the extraordinary effects of Internet networking are beginning to change
the basic business models used by the tourism industry (Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Werthner &
Klein, 2000).
Besides this optimistic view regarding the growing importance of Internet technology in
tourism, there are still many problems that need to be addressed, including poor usability of
individual web sites and the obscure structure of the online tourism domain. More and more web
sites are adopting cutting-edge and impressive web technologies into their web design. However,
usability remains as a major issue. According to Nielsen (1999) about 90% of commercial web
sites have poor usability. A usability study of several highly regarded web sites (including
travelocity.com) found that most testers could not locate the specific information they were
4
trying to find (Radosevich, 1997). In the tourism area, studies have shown that people often get
frustrated when trying to book online, including those CEOs of online travel portal companies
(Stoltz, 1999).
Perhaps more problematic is the fact that the nature of tourist products and services is not
well defined; therefore, their representations on the WWW are obfuscated. For example, a
search of Yahoo! using the keyword “tourism” yields 159 categories, 3,087 web sites and
986,419 web pages (accessed June 12, 2000). These web sites not only include different levels of
destination web sites, hotel and motel web sites, different transportation web sites, tour operators
and agents, but also those web sites for tourism research and administration. It appears that this
extreme variability and complexity of tourism related web sites causes much confusion not only
among travelers but also for tourism professionals and researchers. On the Internet it is often
difficult for the tourist information seeker to reach a specific tourism web site that he (or she)
expects to locate; and, once he (or she) finds a desired web site, it is still hard to pinpoint the
specific information he (or she) needs.
Radosevich (1997) argued that bad web site design is caused primarily by the lack of
understanding of the target web users’ needs. This problem, the authors argue, reflects the fact
that the structure of the online tourism domain is not well defined. The problem of developing
an appropriate semantic structure and domain structure for tourism related products and services
have been addressed using a number of approaches (see Smith, 1989 for a discussion on the
definition of tourism). Nevertheless, when tourism goes online, the structure and characteristics
of tourism fundamentally changed. Contractor and Wasserman (1999) argue that the
development of technology will not only improve and facilitate traditional marketing and
transaction activities, but also “re-configurates” the corporations and the industry. Therefore, a
5
typology of travel and tourism related web sites is needed to describe the differences between
these web sites and will provide insights into potential strategies for their development and
maintenance. This paper begins the process of building an appropriate typology for tourism
related web sites with a review of existing perspectives on the structure and characteristics of
cyberspace. The investigation of the nature of web sites using an information communication
perspective is conducted and a typology of tourism related web sites is proposed. Finally, based
on the nature of information provided by these web sites, the implications of this typology on
research and web design are discussed.
Defining Web Sites
A clear definition of the concept of web sites is necessary in order to establish a typology
of travel and tourism related web sites. Unfortunately, many terms related to the Internet
including the definition of web sites are ambiguous and ill – defined (O’Neil and Lavoie, 1998).
In an attempt to clarify the terminology, O’Neill and Lavoie (1998) defined the term web site as
“a cluster of pages” which is composed of “a unique node on the Web”. Domain names are
closely related to web sites which are “the name assigned to a computer on the Internet”, and “a
single computer’s name can contain multiple strings separated by periods” (Comer, 1997, p.
302). The URL is the global address of documents and other resources on the Web (Webopeida,
1999) and is the most important access information for an organization. A web site also can be
seen as an information concept instead of a physical and tangible entity since one logical web
site can have multiple mirrored sites (O’Neill & Lavoie, 1998). Actually, the relationship
between domain names and web sites is quite complex. The system of domain names is
hierarchical (Comer, 1997) (e.g. travel.yahoo.com can be seen as one subordinate domain name
6
under the domain name www.yahoo.com, since it contains a specific “cluster of pages” about
travel planning and tourist information). Multiple domain names can point to one “cluster of
pages” with the same content (e.g. www.headlinenews.com and www.cnn.com/QUICKNEWS/
are pointing to the same content). One domain name can have multiple clusters of pages that
contain different content (e.g. www.xoom.com is an online community in which each member
can build his (or her) own web site with the address as: members.xoom.com/MEMBERNAME/.
Each member’s web space can be seen as a specific web site). In other words, web sites can also
be represented in different hierarchical levels and the criterion for defining a web site is its
content, not the URL or web address. One web site is not necessarily related to a domain name
and it can be a sub-directory related to a domain name as long as it contains a cluster of web
pages, which are focusing on one specific topic or targeting a specific group of people.
Existing Web Typologies
In Oxford English Dictionary (1989) typology is defined as “…The study of classes with
common characteristics; classification, esp. of human products, behaviour, characteristics, etc.,
according to type; the comparative analysis of structural or other characteristics; a classification
or analysis of this kind”. A typology that reveals the structure of online tourism and travel
related communities according to certain attributes is highly desirable to facilitate the use of the
web for customers, tourism professionals. Many researchers have advanced various perspectives
and views of the Internet and researchers have tried to categorize web sites from a variety of
perspectives. Two major streams of research on web classification and typology are based upon
work in information science and marketing research. The following provides a brief overview of
the major concepts and models (see Fig. 1).
7
[Figure 1 goes here]
Research in Information Science
O’Neill and Lavoie (1998) discussed three types of web sites from a technological
perspective:
1. Public web sites. Those web sites have at least one portion of their contents open to the
public;
2. Private web sites: Those web sites intend to be accessed by specific customers or only the
homepage can be accessed by the public, and prohibit access to other parts of the web site
unless a password or IP address is recognized; and,
3. Provisional sites: Those web sites serve meaningless content, such as: server-templates,
web page re-directing or under construction and not ready for access.
The Dewey Decimal Classification system (DDC) conceived by Melvil Dewey in 1873 is
a general knowledge organization tool and the most widely used library classification system in
the world (Oulton & Fisher, 1995). The DDC system follows a hierarchical structure in which
the world of knowledge is divided into ten main classes where each class is divided into ten
divisions and in turn, each division is divided into ten sections. Many online portals follow a
similar structure as the DCC system. Yahoo!, for example, includes 14 broad areas that are
similar to the DDC system (Lester, 1995) (Table 1). One entry (i.e., web site) can appear in more
than one directory in Yahoo!. O’Neill suggested that just because of the “multi-faceted”
characteristics of the DCC system, it cannot be easily applied to the largest proportion of public
web sites. Instead, he proposed to use the North American Industrial Classification System as a
8
taxonomy of web sites; it is “single-faceted” and the economic activity of a web site is the only
criterion for classification (O’Neill & Lavoie, 1998).
[Table 1 goes here]
Research in Marketing
Several studies have been carried out focusing mainly on the functions web sites can
provide for business and marketing. In 1995, Hoffman and Novak proposed a classification of
web sites according to their functions. The six categories are:
1. Online Storefront
2. Internet Presence (Flat Ad, Image and Information)
3. Content (Fee-Based, Sponsored, Searchable Database)
4. Mall
5. Incentive Site
6. Search Agent
Hoger and his colleagues (1998) also proposed a typology of corporate uses of web sites, which
is similar to the previous one advanced by Hoffman and Novak. They pointed out that
corporations may use web sites for promotion, advertising and communication tools. Five
categories of corporate use of web sites were identified:
1. Promoting awareness;
2. Providing customer support;
3. Selling products or service;
4. Selling advertising space on web sites;
5. Offering electronic information services.
Ho (1999) claimed that since technical issues regarding bandwidth and security can be
9
resolved eventually along with the technological development, the more important question to
ask is what “value” (perceived through the customer’s perspective) can be created on the Web.
Based on his evaluation of 1000 commercial web sites, he classified commercial web sites into
three categories:
I. Promotion of product and services;
II. Provision of data and information;
III. Processing of business transactions.
Four types of value creation processes were also identified: 1. Timely; 2. Custom;
3.Logistics; and, 4. Sensational. From extensive empirical observations, Ho defined timely value
as the value of time-sensitive information; custom value refers to the customization and
personalization of web sites according to the preferences of web visitors; logistic value is defined
as “predicated on preprogrammed propositions on the Web site.” Based on this analysis Ho built
a framework in the form of a three by four matrix (Table 2) in which each cell represents a
purpose-value combination, or a specific value added on the web sites for a specific purpose.
[Table 2 goes here]
The frameworks discussed above provide different perspectives on cyberspace. However,
when we try to apply these views to the online tourism area, we immediately run into problems.
Online tourism is a broad area and we can hardly define it through technical classification or
library classification systems. Technical classification tells us nothing about the contents of web
sites. Classifying web sites based on their economic activities excludes those tourism web sites
that are either too comprehensive to summarize using one or two economic activities or non-
commercial web sites which intend to provide free online communities. These frameworks focus
attention on functionality aspects of web sites but ignore the fact that the World Wide Web is
10
more than a virtual market that provides product information and electronic exchange functions.
It offers the ability to create a virtual community (like www.lonelyplanet.com), a “global
village” (McLuhan, 1964) whereby we as villagers can share our experiences, emotions and
thoughts.
A Proposed Typology of Tourism Related Web Sites
The limitations of above perspectives on the Internet and web sites suggest that we still
need a more profound understanding of web sites, e.g. their nature, their use, their functions, and
the real implications for the use of the Internet, especially in online tourism domain. The authors
argue that the major problem of the proposed typologies of the World Wide Web is that they are
based in large part upon classification schemata derived empirically, or on present
implementation of information technology. With the Internet still in its infancy and undergoing a
process of incredible change, the implementations of the Internet and World Wide Web are still
in the process of exploring and experimenting, as the full potential of the Internet has not been
completely understood. Thus, it is not convincing if we focus on current development of web
technology to develop general rules that guide our design of future information technology.
Alternatively, a normative theory-based approach is more sound and reasonable. We should
approach this issue by identifying the primitive building blocks underlying web sites, and the
nature and characteristics of tourism. Consequently, web sites can be fundamentally seen as a
tool for the exchange of information. Email, bulletin board system (BBS), audio, video, and real
time chat, for example, can be implemented through a web site using server-client structure.
Email is more similar to mail as a one-to-one communication medium; BBS is a many-to-many
mass communication tool; a static web page is similar to one-to-many publishing; and, real time
chatting with video is computer-mediated communication with both visual and audio
11
information. This ‘information-based’ perspective enables the user to better capture the essence
of Internet space (Hoffman and Novak, 1996). Therefore, a critical typology should be based on
the analysis of the nature of information and information exchange within the Internet
environment.
The Concept of Information
1. Information in psychology and information science
The analysis of the nature of information takes a totally different viewpoint with different
disciplinary perspectives. In social psychology, information is generally defined as “anything
that produces changes in consciousness of the human being—a perception, a sensation, an
emotion, a memory, a thought” (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 2). Every bit of
information produced by the environment including light, odor, or touching can contribute to a
person’s consciousness. On the other hand, in information science the concept of information is
differentiated at three levels: 1. Information as messages; 2. Information as cognitively
processed; and, 3. Information as being in a context (i.e., situation, task, and the like) (Saracevic,
1999). The concept of information as messages involves little or no cognitive processing.
Information can also be evaluated from a cognitive processing perspective that focuses attention
on understanding the interaction between “human mind” and “text”. The third level of
information involves not only messages that are cognitively processed but also “a context –
situation, task, problem-at-hand and the like” (Saracevic, 1999, p. 1054). In other words, it
involves motivation and intention, which is further connected within a broader social context
such as task, personality, and culture.
12
2. Information in communication and media research
In a study of telepresence through virtual reality Steuer (1992) proposed that vividness
and interactivity are the two dimensions of media that can determine the sense of telepresence
(see Fig. 2). Following Steuer (1992, p. 81) vividness refers to “the ability of a technology to
produce a sensorially rich mediated environment” which is determined by breadth (i.e., the
number of sensory dimensions simultaneously presented which includes auditory system, haptic
or touch, taste and smell system, and visual system) and depth (i.e., the resolution within each of
the perceptual channels). Interactivity, on the other hand, refers to “the degree to which users of
a medium can influence the form or content of the mediated environment” and is determined by
speed (i.e., the rate of speed at which an input can be assimilated within the mediated
environment), range (i.e., number of outcomes) and mapping (i.e., the ability of the system to
respond to changes in the mediated environment) (Steuer, 1992, pp. 81-87). Another theory
about information, media richness theory was proposed by Daft and Lengel (1984) in order to
investigate media choice in the communication of managers. They argued that a continuum of
communication media exists (from numeric formal, formal written, personal written, telephone,
to face to face) in accordance with lowest to highest information richness. The characteristics of
media that determine the richness of information are: the speed of feedback, the channel (visual
or audio), source (personal or impersonal) and language (body language, numeric or natural
language). Rich media and lean media correspond to the concepts of “hot” media and “lean”
media as proposed by McLuhan (1964).
[Figure 2 goes here]
13
3. Information in marketing research
Marketing research has taken a number of fundamentally different approaches to defining
the concept of information. Evans and Wurster (1997; 2000) used the concepts of information
richness and reach in order to develop strategies for corporations in the electronic commerce era.
Reach is defined as the number of people sharing a piece of information, and information
richness refers to “the quality of information, as defined by the user: accuracy, bandwidth,
currency, customization, interactivity, relevance, security, and so forth” (Evans & Wurster, 2000,
p. 23). In other words, information richness refers to information with the right content, at the
right time, and with the right representation format.
The concept of information intensity is also important in marketing where information
intensity denotes to “the proportion of an organization’s market offering and/or valued chain that
is information-based” (Palmer & Griffith, 1998, p. 39). An organization’s products have both
physical and information components. The information component refers to the information “a
buyer needs to know to obtain the product and use it to achieve the desired results” (Porter &
Millar, 1985, p. 154). On the other hand, every activity in the value chain also has a physical
component and information-processing component. The latter “encompasses the steps required
to capture, manipulate, and channel the data necessary to perform the activity” (Porter & Millar,
1985, p. 154).
From the research areas of psychology, information science, communication and
marketing, the concepts of information vary from messages, cognitively perceived information to
information of human communication. The concept of information richness in media richness
theory provided by Daft and Lengel (1985) is to some extent confusing and misleading in that it
uses different levels of the information concept at different places. Media richness should be a
14
characteristic of a specific medium regardless of the users, but the authors include sources of
information (personal or impersonal) as one determinant of richness of information. If we take
the users of information into account, information is "anything that produces changes in
consciousness" (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 2), suggesting that information is
something subjectively perceived. Information richness should be viewed as different from
media richness. The former is determined by media richness (which can be seen as objective and
defined by the media type), the context of the interaction, and the identities of information sender
and receiver. This can explain how sometimes “lean” email can convey rich information,
depending on the context, time, and the sender and receiver of the email (for a discussion of
email as a rich medium, please refer to Lee, 1994). In terms of the view of information richness
it is nearly impossible to separate the content of information and the medium that carries the
information. As McLuhan (1964, p. 7) pointed out, “the medium is the message”.
From the above analysis, we can see that information can be defined as an extremely
broad and elusive concept. If we focus on the normative model of information technology, an
information provider should focus on providing information with the right content, to the right
person, with the right representation and at the right time. Therefore, we need to focus on both
the sender and the receiver of the information and the context within which they exchange this
information in order to define a typology of tourism related web sites.
Direction of Information Flow
The Internet is a platform for two-way communication. At the lowest layer of TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, the basic transmission protocol for the
Internet) there is always a “hand shake ” style of negotiation between two computers when
transferring information. At the higher level there is also two-way communication between two
15
ends of information communication: for example, even for static web pages, the web visitor can
obtain large quantities of information from the web site; on the other hand, the behavior of
information search of web visitors can implicitly be stored into the web server’s log file and the
opinion of web visitors can be obtained through suggestion or feedback pages on web sites
(Bauer & Scharl, 1999). However, the direction of information flow should be taken into account
when we talk about the Internet. The server-client structure of information transfer is unbalanced
in that providers of content have more power; they can decide the style and format of
information they want to present on the web site, and what kind of information about the users
(the client side) they want to capture. The information sender actually determines the
communication style and format. When building the typology for tourism domain, we label the
major direction of information flow as from the provider to the receiver, in other words, from the
part of web server owner to the web site visitor.
Information Flows in Tourism Related Web Sites
The scope of the concept of tourism has been greatly extended in cyberspace. Since
cyberspace includes every aspect of our life, it also breaks the barriers between different
disciplines when we use the term tourism. For example, when we are trying to locate a web site
for a specific destination (i.e., Paris), we search for a tourism web site. When we try to find
tourism statistics for a specific destination in the United States, we still refer to it as a tourism
web site. These web sites are also categorized as tourism web sites in most online portals. The
term “tourism” in cyberspace is more than an industry or a research area but refers to every
aspect related to tourism. Using this broad definition of tourism, information users related to
tourism can be divided into three groups: 1. Travelers; 2. Tourism industry professionals; and 3.
Tourism researchers. Travelers are the central players in the tourism arena; tourism professionals
16
serve travelers directly; tourism researchers study the relationships and activities of travelers and
tourism professionals. Since the whole tourism area is taking the travelers as the central
character, the role of the information provider is usually taken over by the researcher in
researcher-professional communication and by the professionals in the professional-traveler
communication even though two-way communication always exist; in other words, the main
directions of information flow are always from tourism researchers to tourism professionals, and
from tourism professionals to travelers. Following Sheldon (1997) a basic typology of the
information flow between these groups of travel-related information in a computer-mediated
environment is illustrated in Figure 3. Tourism related web sites can be seen as those sites
designed for facilitating the information flow inside the tourism system. Web sites that link
outside parts with inside parts are too general to be defined as tourism web sites (for example,
those industry web sites which provide hotel equipment can hardly be defined as tourism related
web sites). Web sites can be categorized into travel web sites and tourism web sites based upon
an analysis of information users combined with a broad definition of the words travel and
tourism (see Fig. 4).
[Figures 3 and 4 go here]
Travel Web Sites. Travel web sites focus on travelers as their target visitors and their
main objective is to satisfy the information needs of travelers, including communication among
travelers and between travelers and tourism professionals (including governmental agencies
which are providing tourist information). Tourism companies, non-profit organizations, and
personal web sites that provide information and electronic transactions or facilitate
communication and information exchange among travelers can be categorized into travel web
sites.
17
Tourism Web Sites. Tourism web sites have tourism professionals or tourism researchers
as their target visitors. These web sites include tourism organizations that aim at facilitating
information exchange between or within tourism professionals and tourism researchers
(including governmental agencies or consulting company which can perform tourism research).
Please note that travelers, tourism professionals and tourism researchers are not strictly defined
by their social identity, but rather by the activities (in other words, contexts and tasks), or the
information exchanges in which they are involved, as previously discussed.
The information flows between three parts in the tourism system can be represented by
each of the pairs of communicators:
Information flows between travelers: The web sites used among travelers for the
exchange of personalized, non-commercial information can be classified into this type, including
mainly online traveler communities. This kind of web sites can be seen as customer to customer
(C2C) web site;
Information flows from professionals to travelers: These web sites are created by tourism
industries to facilitate the information flow between travelers and tourism industry professionals
in order to satisfy the information needs of travelers, or they are used by tourism professionals
for marketing purposes. Accordingly, this kind of web sites can be seen as B2C web sites as
normally called in the business world;
Information flows between tourism professionals: These web sites focus on
communication and business information exchange between partners in the tourism industry,
traditionally called B2B web sites;
Information flows from tourism researchers to tourism professionals: These web sites are
used by researchers to provide tourism industry professionals with industrial knowledge and
18
consulting services, and also by professionals to provide sufficient and real-life research topics
for tourism researchers (even though it is not the major objective of these web sites).
Consequently, we can call these web sites researcher to business (R2B) web sites;
Information flows between researchers: Web sites devoted to researcher communities
focus on the exchange of ideas and academic materials among researchers, which we can call
researcher to researcher (R2R) web sites.
From the above analysis, we can see that different information content is needed for
different tourism related web sites. Travel related information needed for travel web sites, for
example, is totally different from tourism related information, which is remotely related to the
travel activity. Additionally, among travel web sites, the information content between travelers
and travelers is different from the content of the information exchange between travelers and
tourism professional.
Information Richness in Tourism Related Web Sites
Once the content of information has been determined by the typology, the next question
to consider is the representation of information between different tourism related web sites.
Information richness captured one important aspect of representation of information. Here, we
can define information richness in terms of the degree of involvement it causes, which is similar
to the sense of telepresense proposed by Steuer (1992). Extremely rich information can cause
the information seeker or surfer to become totally involved in the web sites and lead to an
optimal experience on the web (Hoffman & Novak 1996). Information with a low level of
richness conveys the content in a plain way, which can help information seekers reach a certain
piece of information as effectively as possible without much distraction. Information richness is
19
determined by vividness and interactivity as defined by Steuer (1992). However, since the
information richness here is related to the concept of information defined at the cognitive-
perceived level, one user may have different needs for different information richness depending
on different contexts and tasks. Accordingly, information richness is not specific to one web site,
but specific to the information search contexts and tasks. For example, to convey the image of a
tourist destination, high level of information richness is required to give web visitors a more
exciting pre-travel experience; on the contrary, when the traveler is searching for flight
information, or tourism research web site which provides tourism statistics, he/she needs to reach
the specific information as immediately as possible. Under this kind of circumstances, high
levels of vividness and interactivity may be harmful and low information richness with clear and
intuitive navigation is needed. Therefore, even in one web site, different information search task
should have different information richness. Three levels of richness can be identified for
different information search contexts and tasks (Fig. 5):
[Figure 5 goes here]
1. Low Richness. Provides basically static and text based web pages with little graphic
content and very little interactive content;
2. Moderate Richness. Provides large quantity of graphs and pictures, and some degree of
interactivity like basic search engines, and the content of these web pages may be updated on a
weekly or monthly basis;
3. High Richness. Animations and 3D images will appear on these web sites. They can
provide web users with customized, up-to-date, interactive information, which is dynamically
generated through a CGI program, or other client-side or server-side programs.
20
Design Implications of the Typology
Differences in information flows of web sites provide a meaningful basis for the design
of tourism related web sites. Different types of web sites need to have different content of
information, since different types of web sites have different information user groups with
different information needs. At the same time the information representation of different web
sites or different web pages in one web site may differ greatly in terms of information richness.
The representation of information should depend on the contexts and tasks of information. The
characteristics of context and task-specific information exchanged between users should be
studied carefully in order to design a web site with high usability. Accordingly, different web
sites should adopt different information richness strategies according to tasks and contexts in
order to optimize the information search experience. Intuitively, a destination site targeting
potential travelers can, for example, be colorful, animated and even include real time audio and
video but a B2B web site that intends to provide information for the tourism business partners
should be timely, concise and easy to navigate. For tourism web sites providing tourism
statistics, immediate accessibility is crucial, thus low information richness is needed. When we
design a tutorial for how to do Internet marketing, rich information may be more helpful. For
example, video demonstration is more effective in order to explain the methods and theories of
Internet marketing.
Differences in information richness depend on the various levels of vividness and
interactivity. Steuer (1992) proposed a comparison of various technologies by vividness and
interactivity and is shown in Figure 6. The web technologies in the upper right corner can be
used to maximize the information richness of a web site. For low richness requirements, the
21
design focus should be an easy-to-navigate and intuitive structure, in which the technique in the
lower left corner can be used.
[Figure 6 goes here]
Conclusion and Future Research
It is not an easy task to construct a typology for tourism related web sites. In this article
the authors argue that in order to get a clear view of the online tourism domain, a normative
approach should be taken instead of an empirical method, since information technology is still
undergoing fast development. The most fundamental aspect of web sites is the exchange of
information. Therefore, a critical typology of web sites should be based on the communication of
different web users and the nature of this information exchange. Accordingly, tourism related
web sites and can be categorized into travel web sites and tourism web sites. Furthermore, the
authors assume that information representation can be characterized by the level of information
richness which, in turn, is determined by the two measures of vividness and interactivity.
Information representation should be different according to different information search contexts
and tasks even in the same web sites. This normative approach of tourism related web sites
suggests that the standard of good web site design should not be universally identical for all the
web sites, but rather based on user’s needs, contexts and tasks in the information search process.
In the tourism area development and research on information technology needs to incorporate the
results of consumer behavior research on tourists. Only through this way can high-usability
tourism related web sites be produced and the benchmark and criteria of web site and
eCommerce design be set.
The conclusion derived from normative approach that information richness depending on
user needs, contexts and tasks requires careful investigation. Empirical evidence is needed to
22
evaluate/demonstrate that differences exist among the information exchanges of traveler, tourism
professionals and tourism researchers, and that their needs differ in terms of the richness of the
information presented, which is depending on contexts and tasks. For example, it would be
interesting to associate the concepts of hedonic information surfing versus utilitarian information
searching (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982; Vogt and Fesenmaier 1998; Hofacker, 2000) with the
construct of information richness and to investigate the links between information richness and
the levels of hedonic information surfing and utilitarian information searching. Along with the
development of information technology, a typology based on a more detailed classification
scheme may be constructed when more customized, context and task –specific information
provision becomes possible.
23
References
Bauer, C. & Scharl, A. (1999). Advanced design of web information systems based on dominant
and emerging web communication pattern. Fifth Australian World Wide Web Conference,
Lismore, Australia: Southern Cross University. [online]. http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw99/
papers/bauer/
Comer, D.E. (1997). The Internet: everything you need to know about computer networking and
how the Internet works. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Contractor, N.S, & Wasserman, S. (1999). Testing multi-level, multi-theoretical hypotheses
about networks in 21st century organizational forms: An analytic framework and
empirical example. [online]. http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu:1000/contractor/
pstarpaper.html.
Daft, R.L., & Lengel, R.H. (1984). Information richness: a new approach to managerial behavior
and organization design. in Staw, B.M., Cummings, L.L. (eds.), Research in
Organizational Behavior, 6,191-233. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.
Evans, P., & Wurster, T.S. (1997). Strategy and the new economics of information. Harvard
Business Review, 75(5), 70-82.
Evans, P., & Wurster, T.S. (2000). Blown to bits: how the new economics of information
transforms strategy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Fesenmaier, D. R. and J. Jeng (2000). Assessing Structure in the Pleasure Trip Planning Process,
Tourism Analysis, forthcoming.
Fodness, D., & Murray, B. (1997). Tourist information search. Annals of Tourism Research,
24(3), 503-523.
24
Forrester Research. (1999). Online retail to reach $184 billion by 2004 as post-Web retail era
unfolds. [online]. http://www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,164,FF.html.
Hirschman, E., & Holbrook, M.B. (1982). Hedonic consumption: emerging concepts, methods
and propositions. Journal of Marketing, 46(3), 92-101.
Ho, J. (1997). Evaluating the World Wide Web: A global study of commercial sites. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(1). [On-line]. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/
issue1/ ho.html
Hofacker, C.F. (2000). Internet Marketing. Dripping Springs, Texas: Digital Springs.
Hoffman, D.L., & Novak, T. (1996). A new marketing paradigm for electronic commerce.
Information Society, 13(1), 43-54.
Hoffman, D.L., & Novak, T. (1996). Marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated
environments: conceptual foundations. Journal of Marketing, 60(3), 50-68.
Hoffman, D.L., Novak, T., & Chatterjee, P. (1995). Commercial Scenarios for the Web:
Opportunities and Challenges, journal of computer-mediated communication, 1(3).
[online]. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue3/hoffman.html
Hoger, E.A, Cappel, J.J., & Myerscough, M. (1998). Navigating the Web with a typology of
corporate uses. Business Communication Quarterly, 61(2), 39-47.
Jenkins, C., Jackson, M., & Burden, P. (1998). Automatic classification system of web resources
using Java and Dewey Decimal Classification. Computer Networks & ISDN Systems,
30(1-7), 646-648.
Jones, S. (Eds.) (1999). Doing Internet research: critical issues and methods for examining the
Net. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications.
25
Kaye, B., & Medoff, N.J. (1999). World Wide Web: a mass communication perspective.
Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Kubey, R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Television and the quality of life: how viewing
shapes everyday experience. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Association.
Lee, A.S. (1994). Electronic mail as medium for rich communication: an empirical investigation
using hermeneutic interpretation. MIS Quarterly, 18(2), 143-157.
Lester, D. (1995). Yahoo! Profiles of a web database. Database, 18(6), 46-50.
Maddox, L. M., Mehta, D., & Daubek, H. G. (1997), The role and effect of web addresses in
advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, 37, 47-59
McFarlan, E.W. (1984). Information technology changes the way you compete. Harvard
Business Review, 62(3), 98-103
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Moutinho, L. (1987). Consumer behavior in tourism. European Journal of Marketing, 21(10), 5-
44.
Nielsen, J. (1999). User interface directions for the web, Communications of the ACM, 42(1), 65-
72.
Nielsen, J. (1999). When bad design elements become the standard. [on-line].
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991114.html.
O’Neill, E.T., Lavoie, B.F. & etc. (1998). Web characterization using sampling methods.
[online]. http://www.w3.org/1998/11/05/WC-workshop/Presentations/oneill/sld001.htm.
Oulton, T., & Fisher, S. (1995). Using libraries, Management Decision, 33(5), 16-21.
Palmer, J., & Griffith, D. A. (1998). Information intensity: a paradigm for understanding web
site design. Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice, 6(3), 38-42.
26
Poon, A. (1993). Tourism, technology and competitive strategies. Oxon: CAB International.
Porter, M.E., & Millar, V.E. (1985). How information gives you competitive advantage. Harvard
Business Review, 63(4), 149-160.
Radosevich, L. (1997). Fixing web-site usability. InfoWorld, 19(50), 81-82.
Saracevic, T. (1999). Information science, Journal of the American Society for Information
Science, 50(12), 1051-106.
Shannon, C., & Weaver, W. (1948). The mathematical theory of communication. Champaign:
University of Illinois Press.
Sheldon, P.J. (1997). Tourism information technology. Wallingford, UK: CAB International.
Simpson, J.A., & Weiner, E.S.C. (1989). Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Smith, S. L. J. (1989). Tourism analysis: a handbook. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Sterne, J. (1999). World Wide Web: integrating the Web into your marketing strategy. New
York: John Wiley & Sons.
Steuer, J. (1992). Defining virtual reality: dimensions determining telepresence. Journal of
Communication, 42(4), 34-43.
Stoltz, C. (1999). Each year, a bit less. Washington Post (1999, Nov 11).
Vogt, C.A., & Fesenmaier, D.R. (1998). Expanding the functional information search model.
Annals of Tourism Research, 25(3), 551-578.
Webopedia. URL [online].http://webopedia.internet.com/TERM/U/URL.html.
Werthner, H., Klein, S. (1999). Information Technology and Tourism – A Challenging
Relationship. Wien: SpringerWienNewYork.
Wiio, O. A. (1981). Information and communication: a conceptual analysis. Helsinki, Finland:
University of Helsinki, Department of Communication.
27
Yuan, Yu-lan and D. R. Fesenmaier (2000). “Preparing for the New Economy: The use of the
Internet and Intranet in American Convention and visitor bureaus,” Information
Technology and Tourism, forthcoming.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank all the members of eKnowledge group (Ulrike Gretzel, Yeong-
Hyeon Hwang and Youcheng Wang), and Yong-Hyun Cho, Yulan Yuan, and Han-Fang Ying in
the National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce for their contribution to the discussions on
this topic. Special thanks go to the anonymous reviewer whose opinion was crucial for the
completion of this paper.
Biographical Notes
Bing Pan is a PhD student in the Department of Leisure Studies and National Laboratory for
Tourism and eCommerce, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests
include the tourists’ information search, decision-making, web usability, and tourism marketing
in computer-mediated environments.
Daniel R. Fesenmaier is a professor in the Department of Leisure Studies and Director of the
National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
His research interests include the role of information in the decision-making process and the
development information systems for tourism marketing.
28
Arts & Humanities
Business & Economy
Computers & Internet
Education
Entertainment
Government
Health
News & Media
Recreation & Sports
Reference
Regional
Science
Social Science
Society & Culture
Table 1. Highest level of Yahoo! Classification System
29
Value\Purpose Promotion Provision Processing
Timely
Custom
Logistic
Sensational
Table 2. Value Matrix (Ho, 1998)
30
Name Users or Authors Classification Scheme Limitations
Technical
Classification
O’Neill and Lavoie
(1998)
Classify web sites
according to their
accessibility
Content is not addressed.
Dewey Decimal
Classification system
Yahoo! and other
online portals
Hierarchical structure,
mostly used in library
material classification
Multi-faceted, cannot be
easily applied to large
quantity of web sites
North American
Industrial
Classification System
O’Neill and Lavoie
(1998)
Economic activity of a
web site is the only
criterion.
Excluding web sites which
include more than one
industrial area and non-
commercial web sites
Functional
Classification
Hoger, Cappel and
Myerscough (1998)
Classify corporate uses of
web sites according to
their functions in the
corporate operation
Excluding those non-
commercial web sites
Value Chain Ho (1997)
Classify the different
values created on
the Web sites
Targeting at commercial
web sites
Figure 1. Existing web typologies
31
Telepresence
Vividness Interactivity
Breadth Depth Speed Range Mapping
Figure 2. Variables influencing telepresence (from Steuer 1992)
32
Traveler
Tourism
Professional
Tou
rism
Researcher
Traveler
Tourism
Professional
Tourism
Researcher
B2B
R2R
B
2
C
B
2
C
R
2
B
R
2
B
C2C
Note:
White Arrows: Information flows of travel web sites; Gray arrows: Information flows of tourism web sites.
Figure 3. Information Flows in Tourism Area.
33
Figure 4. A Typology of Tourism Web Sites by Information Flows
Information
Flow
Business
Term
Explanation
Web Site Examples
Travelers <>
travelers
C2C
Facilitate information exchange
between travelers
Online traveler communities:
www.lonelyplanet.com
Travel
Web
Sites
Professionals >
travelers
B2C
Facilitate information exchange
between travelers and different
tourism professionals
Provide online information to
travelers:
www.enjoyillinois.com
Professional
<> professional
B2B
Business to business
communication, web sites of
tourism professional associations, or
tourism administration
International Association of
Convention & Visitor
Bureaus:
www.iacvb.org
Researchers >
Professionals
R2B
Web sites to enhance
communication between
professionals and researchers (e.g.,
online - consulting and marketing
information systems)
National Laboratory for
Tourism & eCommerce:
www.tourism.uiuc.edu
Tourism
Web
Sites
Researchers <>
Researchers
R2R
Communication between
researchers
Tourism Research Webring:
www.waksberg.com/webring
34
Levels Characteristics of Information Web Site Examples
High
Richness
Customization, high bandwidth,
audio and video, currency,
interactivity, security transaction
www.expedia.com
Moderate
Richness
Moderate bandwidth,
interactivity, updated periodically
www.enjoyillinois.com
Low
Richness
Static web pages with low
bandwidth
www.cupartnership.org/cvb/main.htm
Figure 5. Three levels of information richness of different web pages.
35
High
Interactivity
Vividness
Low
Low
High
Email
BBS
Real Time
Video-
Conference
Video News
Graphics
web pages
Static Web
Pages
Animation
Text
-
Based
Chat
Chat With
Virtual
Identities
3D
Interactive
Images
Image Map
Online
Games
Figure 6.
A classification of web technologies by vividness and
interactivity. (based on Steuer, 1992)
