Information Search Process and Familiarity with a Tourist Destination: Criteria for Designing Hotel Websites

The internet has become one of the main channels for the promotion and sale of services related to tourism. As a result, producers and distributors alike are keen to resolve the question as to which factors determine the website choice of internet browsers. In this paper we report an experiment conducted to determine the factors that need to be taken into consideration when designing a website for familiar and unfamiliar tourist destinations. To do so, we design an empirical test that combines an experiment in which consumers differ (between subjects) in the extent of their familiarity with a destination with a conjoint analysis in which respondents consider (within subjects) alternative hotel websites. our results suggest that a website for familiar destinations tend to be scanned and not analyzed in detail, and consumers tend to use fewer content and presentation elements in their assessment than for an unfamiliar destination. These results run counter to most claims that what matters is a sophisticated web design, but such studies have tended to ignore the type of product or service being promoted and the target group being addre.