Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
S.A. Sabaruddin, N.H. Abdullah, S.A. Jamal & S. Tarmudi
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: This study addresses a two-part research question: Is the Go2homestay website easy
to access and use, and does it provides visitors with sufficient information to make informed choices?
A variety of standard methodologies were employed, including content evaluation, a focus group and
a questionnaire survey. Demographic information was recorded for each participant. A review of the
Go2homestay website by visitors revealed that the visitors were likely to evaluate this homestay guide
website as acceptable. In general, visitors rate the accessibility and content quality of Go2homestay web-
site as above average.
Keywords
:
Website evaluation, website, accessibility, content quality, Go2homestay
1 INTRODUCTION
Many previous studies have focussed on the
relationship between website effectiveness and pur-
chase intention (Bai, Law & Wen, 2008; Ranaweera,
Bansal & McDougall, 2008; Shi, 2011; Thongpa-
panl & Ashraf, 2011; Woodside, Vicente & Duque,
2011) and the relationship between effectiveness
and revisit intention (Aziz, Musa & Sulaiman,
2010; Faullant, Matzler & Füller, 2008; Kabadayi
& Gupta, 2011). Nevertheless, little analysis has
been conducted of the Go2homestay website's
accessibility and content quality and their influ-
ences on visitors' intentions to make initial visits
to the site's destinations. Thus, this study aims to
explore the Go2homestay website, an official web-
site for homestay tourism that serves as a platform
for tourists or visitors to make enquiries or reser-
vations, from the visitors' perspective to determine
its effectiveness in encouraging more visitors to
homestay in Malaysia.
Due to its emerging market, Malaysia has become
one of many countries that are rapidly embrac-
ing online travel planning (Vinod, 2011). More
than two-thirds of Malaysians use online book-
ing systems for travel and tourism products and
services, including airlines, hotels and private car
rental (Abd Aziz, Tap, Osman & Mahmud, 2013).
Despite the substantial number of consumers
opting to book travel online, previous Malaysian
studies on the accessibility and content quality
of destination websites are remarkably limited in
quantity and scope. A recent study by Pourabedin
and Nourizadeh (2013) focussed exclusively on the
influence of visual website design features on the
intention to travel in Malaysia. Selamat and Ismail
(2008) primarily focussed on Content Based Image
Retrieval for the Malaysia Tourism Website to
examine user perceptions and experiences.
Another study focussed mainly on how tour-
ism websites reflect the role of Islam in promoting
destinations to Muslim and non-Muslim tourists
(Hashim & Murphy, 2008). Despite the numerous
studies examining website characteristics and effec-
tiveness, especially in hotel organisation (Musante,
Bojanic & Zhang, 2009; Schmidt, Cantallops &
dos Santos, 2008), travel agencies (Chiou, Lin &
Perng, 2011; Ruiz-Molina, Gil-Saura & Moliner-
Velázquez, 2010), rural tourist accommodations
(Gregory, Wang & DiPietro, 2010; Herrero & San
Martín, 2012) and official tourism (Lepp, Gibson
& Lane, 2011), little is known about the accessi-
bility and content quality of homestay tourism
websites.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1
Go2homestay website
Web-based technology has played an important
role and become a necessity in the travel and tour-
ism industry (Lu, Lu & Zhang, 2002). Due to the
spread of Internet access and an increase in the
demand for online services, most tourism sec-
tors, such as accommodations, transportation and
tourist destinations, now offer their products and
services online. The Malaysian Ministry of Tour-
ism has endorsed the Go2homestay website (http://
www.go2homestay.com) as the official homestay
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