Title: Analysis and evaluation of tourism e-commerce websites in China

Authors: Yaobin Lu, Zhaohua Deng, Bin Wang

Addresses: School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China. ' School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China. ' College of Business Administration, University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, TX 78539, USA

Abstract: Internet has become a platform for companies in the travel and tourism industry to bring their products and services to the customers around the world in a direct, efficient, and cost-minimising fashion. In this research, we develop an index system for the evaluation of Chinese tourism websites, incorporating factors relating to website design, contents, and effectiveness. We use the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the weights of different components of the index, and the Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation (FSE) method to evaluate the websites. We illustrate the use of our method by analysing the China Travel Network website.

Keywords: tourism e-commerce; electronic commerce; website evaluation; index system; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; fuzzy synthetic evaluation; China Travel Network.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSEM.2007.016523

International Journal of Services, Economics and Management, 2007 Vol.1 No.1, pp.6 - 23

Published online: 07 Jan 2008 *

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