ANALYSIS OF THE OFFICIAL WEBSITES OF TOURISM DESTINATIONS CLASSIFIED SOCIOCULTURALLY BY THE REPORT THE ECONOMIST INTELIGENCE UNIT LIMITED

Abstract

Due to the increased accessibility of the tourism by the world's population, tourist destinations have invested on the internet, with websites, as a mean of dissemination of cities, providing information about the visited destinations to the users. In this context, this paper analyzed qualitatively the official websites of the cities that were among the first three placed in the ranking of sociocultural competitiveness, sponsored by The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited in 2012, trying to check its efficiency and the distribution of tourist information to consumers. Techniques as "SWOT" analysis and the Critical Success Factors for Websites, proposed by the World Tourism Organization were used, and as a result, it is noticed that the official websites of tourism, even belonging to major international destinations, have deficiencies that must be corrected to improve the quality of communication between destinations and tourists.