Abstract
Web marketing is a new way of performing the task of marketing, made feasible by the advent of
new technology namely the Internet. It is a form of direct marketing. Michael E. Porter (2001) has defined
the Internet as an enabling technology, a powerful set of tools that can be used, wisely or unwisely, in
almost any industry and as part of any strategy. In addition to physical goods, services are increasingly
offered through the internet. Electronic services have already changed whole industries, such as banking,
health, education, etc., changing the economics behind services offered by streamlining the business and
service processes. Tourism industry is no exception to that. Information and communication technology in
tourism sector is of special significance. This is due to its special product behavior. Accordingly, various
high tech information and communication technologies are in use in the tourism sector around the world.
They are used for tourism product development, marketing, distribution and training to tourism sector
personnel. Mature tourist destinations are usually highly controlled by the operators. The introduction of
the internet as a commercial tool has proved the supply side with an alternative channel for
Communication, Marketing and Distribution, which may prove capable of side stepping these middlemen.
In the present research, the role to the internet among hotel, travel agencies and airline companies in
Jammu is analyzed. Primary survey was conducted among these companies in order to find out the extent
of the use of internet in developing Jammu as a destination. With this backdrop, the present study aims to
study the role of destination based tourism websites in promoting Jammu as a destination by various
Service providers viz. Hotels, Travel Agencies and Airlines in terms of the parameters taken in the study
and accordingly to suggest ways and means to improve the websites for better Tourism Destination
Marketing. The findings of the study suggest that the websites are scoring above average values on the all
the five factors under study namely Functionality, Convenience, Website Layout, Convenience and Content
but, however, their performance can still be improved. The Service providers who use these websites, are
completely satisfied with the speed of information downloads, transaction processing speed, website designs, logical organization of the website etc.
Keywords : Web marketing, Destinations, Service providers.
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