Analysing Linkage between ICT and US State Tourism Websites

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Date
2019-12-24
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Publisher
Texas A & M University
Abstract

Destination websites have been an important component in the online travel ecosystem since the beginning of the commercial Internet, and their adoption and use of ICT websites to serve their online marketing goals reflects their overall strategy and ability to adapt to the ever-changing environment. The purpose of this study is to examine 1) what types of ICT websites are hyperlinked to destination websites, and 2) how the linkages to ICT websites have evolved along with the significant technological developments during the last two decades. To that end we analysed archival hyperlink data for state tourism websites in the United States. We find that the connectivity between US state tourism websites and ICT websites increased dramatically with the availability of social media and Web 2.0 websites, and fragmentation of the network was reduced likely due to technology convergence. This study offers several research directions for understanding technology adoption by destination marketing organizations.

Description
Keywords
ICT, Internet, Tourism websites, hyperlink analysis
Citation