INFORMATION CONVERGENCE IN THE LONG TAIL. THE CASE OF TOURISM DESTINATION INFORMATION

Alessandro Inversiniwebatelier.netUniversity of Lugano, Switzerlandalessandro.inversini@lu.unisi.ch

Dimitrios Buhalis ICTHR, Bournemouth University, England dbuhalis@bournemouth.ac.uk

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Agenda• Tourism and Long Tail: objectives of the study • Quality of the information• Methodology• Results (website classification)• Results (information quality)•Discussion & conclusions

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Tourism and Long Tail: Objectives of the study• (e)Tourism is traditionally an information intensive domain

(Gretzel, et al., 2000; Buhalis, 2003)

• Long Tail and Read&Write web are influencing the domain (Anderson, 2006; Nicholas et al., 2007)

•Information Overload and Information Entropy(Rogers and Agarwala-Rogers, 1975; Jones et al., 2004; Hiltz and Turoff, 1985)

• Objectives of the study are to:

•analyze the information market around a given destination website, starting from the most relevant keywords which the end user inputs in the search engine to reach the destination official web site;• study the information sources and providers, as well as content quality with focusing on the unofficial information providers.

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Quality of Information• The role of the search engine in the information seeking

• Relationship between user satisfaction and search engine results(Rumpraidt and Donnel, 1999)

• Information, content and quality have been the main concerns of the knowledge society(Cantoni and Tardini, 2006)

• Quality of the contents: •Accuracy (what? and how?);•Authority (who?);•Objectivity (why?); •Currency (when?);•Coverage (what? and for whom?).

( Alexander and Tate 1999)

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Methodology – Visitlondon.com• An usability driven approach: MiLE+ Framework.

(Triacca et al., 2005)

• Search engine (Google) queries on 9 given keywords (Google Keywords).• Classification:

•official (institutional) websites;•unofficial (not institutional) websites.

• Heuristic driven content quality

#° Investigated Dimension

Explanation

#1 Accuracy It states if a text describes adequately the referenced world, and if it is consistent in itself.

#2 Currency The electronic communication over the web is supposed to be delivered in the precise moment the reader accesses it.

#3 Coverage It defines the borders of the topics covered by the given website. #4 Objectivity The content objectivity indicates the commitment of the sender with respect to the

conveyed content #5 Authority It defines both, the adequacy of the author to the text and adequacy of the author to

the reader. #6 Conciseness People rarely read Web pages word by word: they prefer to read on the screen few

lines (15-25 lines)

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Queries Results •Search results classification

•Relevant keywords (competition)

Kewords Google Ranking Unique results Visit London Other Official Un Official ws NW/NR

London 1 30 1 14 13 2London eye 9 28 2 3 19 4London hotel / 28 0 7 20 1London theatre / 25 0 6 19 0London tourism 1 29 2 5 15 7London tourist 1 28 2 6 18 2London visitor 1 27 2 9 16 0Ticket London / 28 0 1 27 0Visit London 1 26 7 10 8 1

249 16 61 155 17Total

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Information Quality• Heuristic driven approach (MiLE+)

• accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, coverage• 1-5 scale

• Official websites: • strong authority (average value 4.8), • very good accuracy and objectivity (average value 4.2)• good currency (average value 3.8).

•Unofficial websites: • good accuracy and currency (average respectively 3.6 and 3.5) • sufficient coverage and conciseness (average respectively 3.8 and 3.9).•insufficient objectivity and authority (average values 2.6 and 2.5).

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Information Quality (2)• Web2.0 websites?

• Currency?• Objectivity?• Authority?

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Discussion and Conclusions• Prospective travellers are offered a wide range of information providers and a plethora of websites.• DMO are integrating Web2.0 and unofficial information Providers (VisitLonon.com).

• Future work: harvest and organize high quality information •Strategy (folksonomies ???)

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