engleski

State of affairs and possibilities of tourist destinations' e-marketing

The Internet, as a "network of networks", provides the tourist catering entities with some entirely new competitive possibilities thru its multiple services. Namely, strong tourist market internationalization with a quotidian fluctuation of new and existent competitors took place in tourism industry during the last decade. Strong Internet development, providing for an immediate and permanently open information access worldwide, is one of the reasons for such a situation. For the time being, concerning the Croatian Internet arena, it is possible to distinguish the following tourist site types: Corporate sites (hotel- or restaurant-based, tourist, travelers', etc.), Booking sites (transformed traditional booking systems, hotel chain booking systems, individual hotel or corporate booking systems, booking services), Destination tourist sites (town-, city-, or county-based, municipal, and regional tourist associations' Web sites), Tourist mega sites, Tourist search engines and information catalogs, Tourist information services. Due to the tourist sites' number, the paper provides for only a comparative survey of the present state of affairs predominantly pertaining to destination tourist sites and tourist Web directories. Out of a total of 310 Tourist Associations at all systemic levels, including the national-leveled Croatian Tourist Association (CTA), only 117 Tourist Associations, or 37 %, posses a Website or at least a Webpage of their own. Noticeable is also the fact that many Tourist Associations at all tiers update their pages irregularly. Slightly encouraging is the fact that the CTA's HQ maintains a high-quality, updated, and constantly upgraded portal, whereby it is positively comparable with the competitive countries' tourist portals. In addition to the very online presence, important is also a contextual and informative quality and informative efficacy of this presence. For a Website quality analysis' sake, the paper utilizes the Model of Internet Commerce Adoption.

Internet; tourist destination; tourist portals; tourist Web directories; information search engines

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