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Journal of Travel Research
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Representation of the Online Tourism Domain in Search Engines

Zheng Xiang

University of North Texas

Karl Wöber

MODUL University Vienna

Daniel R. Fesenmaier

Temple University

With the growing importance of the Internet for travel planning, understanding the online domain of tourism is vital in order to identify the challenges and potential solutions for effectively marketing travel destinations. This study focuses attention on understanding the representation of the tourism domain on the Internet. Analyses of search results from a major search engine were conducted in order to assess: 1) the visibility of destination-related information; 2) the visibility of various industry sectors within destinations; and 3) the power structure of websites that represent a specific destination. The results show that although there is a huge amount of information indexed, travelers can only access a tiny fraction of the domain. Also, there are a relatively small number of websites dominating the search results. This study provides a number of important insights into the challenges facing the tourism industry with respect to representing a destination online.

Key Words: Internet • destination marketing • tourism domain • travel information search • search engine

This version was published on November 1, 2008

Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 47, No. 2, 137-150 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0047287508321193
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Z. Xiang, U. Gretzel, and D. R. Fesenmaier
Semantic Representation of Tourism on the Internet
Journal of Travel Research, May 1, 2009; 47(4): 440 - 453.
[Abstract] [PDF]