Functionality Evaluation for Destination Marketing Websites in Smart Tourism Cities

The internet environment enables effective promotion of tourism destinations to tourists; creating advantages for operating and managing destination marketing websites. This study makes the first and important attempt to develop hierarchical functionality evaluation criteria for destination marketing websites of smart tourism cities. Focus group discussion and empirical evaluation are used to analyze the destination marketing websites of 33 smart tourism cities in China. Results present the functionality performances of the 33 websites and several major deficiencies and challenges in the development of smart tourism websites. Based on the functionality evaluation results, the implications for future improvements and the use of smart tourism websites for destination marketing are discussed in this paper.