Tourism : an offline/online perspective

Before the birth of the Internet, tourist destinations have reached their customers with traditional marketing activities and via travel agencies. Today these activities can be carried out through the Internet. It is therefore important for tourist destinations to mix their traditional offline activities with the online opportunities that have occurred. The purpose with this study is to provide a better understanding on how offline tourist destinations use the Internet to create a better total travel experience for tourists. To reach this purpose, two research questions have been stated, focusing on how the online tourism experience can be described, as well as the offline experience. Literature was reviewed based on these research questions, resulting in a conceptual framework. In order to test this framework, a qualitative, case study methodology was employed, focusing on two companies in the tourism business. Through interviews with the companies, as well as direct observations/interaction with their websites, the findings indicate that a website is an important tool in the tourism business, primarily for reaching out with information. It is important to build the website in an effective way, where the structure and web design offer the users fast and easy access to the information they are looking for regarding the offline experience they seek.Validerat; 20101217 (root