To what extent are regional tourism organisations (RTOs) in Australia leveraging the benefits of web technology for destination marketing and eCommerce

TLDR: This paper presents the results of a longitudinal study that seeks to determine if and to what extent, Regional Tourism Organisations in Australia are leveraging the benefits of Web technology for destination marketing and eCommerce.

Abstract: The information-intensive nature of the tourism and travel industry suggests an important role for Web technology in the promotion and marketing of tourist destinations. The rapid development of the Internet and WWW is having profound impacts on the industry. In fact, according to Tourism Australia, travel and tourism has become the single largest category of products sold over the Internet (Tourism White Paper, Destinations online: approaches for regional tourism organisations, Centre for Regional Tourism Research, Southern Cross University, 2007). With reports of travel purchases being one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet community it is no surprise that the number of tourism operators on the Web has increased considerably over the past few years. This paper presents the results of a longitudinal study that seeks to determine if and to what extent, Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) in Australia are leveraging the benefits of Web technology for destination marketing and eCommerce. The study was undertaken over an eight year period from 2000 to 2008, using the Extended Model of Internet Commerce Adoption (eMICA) (Burgess and Cooper, International conference on telecommunications and electronic commerce, Dallas, November, 2000). A significant finding of this study is that despite assertions that the Tourism industry is leading the field in terms of eCommerce adoption (Buhalis and Law, Information and communication technologies in tourism, Ljubljana, Springer, Berlin, 2007), and this may hold true with some providers in the sector (for example, hotels and airlines) it does not appear to be the case with Australian RTOs who have been slow to embrace eCommerce. The results of the study also add support to the premise of eMICA, that is, in developing commercial websites, businesses (particularly, SMEs) in this industry sector typically start simply by establishing a presence on the Web and build on functionality over time, as their experience with and expertise in the use of Internet and Web technologies increases and they become more aware of the benefits the Web has to offer.