E-Commerce Function of Local Governments' Official Tourism Websites - A Perspective of Internet Marketing

This paper evaluated the e-commerce function of 31 provinces' official tourism websites in mainland China from the perspective of Internet marketing. The assessment was conducted mainly from the following five aspects: marketing strategy, information serving, transaction processing, technology supporting and website operating. The results indicate that most official tourism Web sites are at the preliminary stage of information providing. It is necessary to improve the functions of implementing the destination marketing strategy, transaction processing and so on. As far as the eastern, middle and western parts of China are concerned, there are no significant differences among different regions in the official tourism websites' Internet marketing function. Finally, the authors put forward some suggestions for further development of official tourism websites.