Evaluation of the usability of Chinese destination management organisation websites

Website usability reflects the quality of a website. Presently, there are only few prior studies that focused on Destination Management Organisation (DMO) website usability. There is also limited, if ever any, research on Chinese DMO websites. Since China is predicted to be the top destination in the world by 2020, it is important to examine the readiness of its web destination websites. By using a modified heuristic evaluation methodology, this research identified the current situation of Chinese DMO websites and evaluated the usability of Chinese provincial DMO websites. The research findings indicate that many DMOs in China have gradually introduced websites to promote their destinations and that overall the Chinese provincial DMO websites have medium usability problems. This study demonstrated that there is no relation between the tourism income of a destination and the performance of its website.School of Hotel and Tourism Managemen