Benchmarking Representation of Marketing Mix of the Selected Destination Websites of State DMO's of India

With increasing role of Destination websites as an information gateway for potential tourists, researchers are highlighting the importance of website evaluation. In the context of Indian tourism industry, though the area of tourism is well researched, no visible literature is found in the field of e-tourism initiatives of DMOs. Therefore, the present research evaluates the destination websites of state DMOs of India and successfully fills the research gap.

Top destination websites of Indian state DMOs were benchmarked by using content analysis method. For that the comprehensive list of total 105 contents, representing ‘must-have contents of the destination websites’, was developed. Factor loading technique of Benchmarking was applied to finalize the top 5 DMOs which led to the selection of destination websites of Kerala, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat states.

The result of benchmarking exposed that sample websites have similar practices but different in design hence the benchmarking analysis was not able to identify general best website in all aspects. The highest score is achieved by Kerala, and then Uttar Pradesh followed by Gujarat and Maharashtra and the least score was achieved by destination website of Rajasthan state. Further, the areas such as interactivity, website customization, mobile techniques, accessibility, online booking facilities, use of UGC, online chat/24*7 interactive services were commonly neglected. Study revelations were presented in the form of spider chart and prolific suggestions for the improvement of the website design were given along with future scope of research.