Title: Tourism websites in the Middle East: readable or not?

Authors: Setayesh Sattari; Åsa Wallström

Addresses: Industrial Marketing, Luleå University of Technology, SE - 971 87 Luleå, Sweden ' Industrial Marketing, Luleå University of Technology, SE - 971 87 Luleå, Sweden

Abstract: Websites are an indispensable communication tool for tourism and destination organisations. Accordingly, it is vital tourism and destination management organisations meet certain criteria in order to guarantee high-quality tourism-related information and maintain an effective website. One important factor in a website's effectiveness and quality is its readability. To facilitate reading comprehension, website text must be clearly written. Using a variety of readability measures, this paper investigates the readability of English language tourism websites of countries in the Middle East. The findings and conclusions are discussed along with limitations of the study and possible avenues for future research.

Keywords: readability measures; tourism websites; content analysis; communication; internet; world wide web; Middle East; destination organisations; tourism organisations; destination management; high-quality information; tourism-related information; reading comprehension; website text; English language; tourists; Bahrain; Egypt; Iran; Iraq; Israel; Jordan; Kuwait; Lebanon; Libya; Oman; Palestine; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; Turkey; Syria; United Arab Emirates; Yemen; UAE; leisure marketing; tourism marketing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLTM.2013.052613

International Journal of Leisure and Tourism Marketing, 2013 Vol.3 No.3, pp.201 - 214

Received: 28 May 2012
Accepted: 13 Aug 2012
Published online: 14 Mar 2013 *

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