Abstract
It is argued that within the context of travelers' trip planning META tags, especially the “description” tag, are important information which guides website selection. Thus, from a destination marketing organization perspective they are an important means within which to convey persuasive messages to travelers. This study examines the extent to which META tags are used on DMO websites in Northeastern United States. Managerial implications and agenda for future research are discussed.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bollen, J. (2001). A Cognitive Model of Adaptive Web Design and Navigation: A Shared Knowledge Perspective. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Faculty of Psychology, Free University of Brussels.
Buhalis, D. (1996). Information and Telecommunication Technologies as a Strategic Tool for Tourism Enhancement at Destination Regions. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism (ENTER) Conference. Vienna and New York: Springer-Verlag.
Chi, E.H., Pirolli, P., Chen, K., and Pitkow, J. (2001). Using Information Scent to Model User Information Needs and Actions on the Web. CHI 2001, 3(1): 490–497.
Craven, T. C. (2000). Features of DESCRIPTION META Tags in Public Home Pages. Journal of Information Science, 26(5): 303–311.
Craven, T. C. (200la). DESCRIPTION META Tags in Pages Returned on Different Search Engines. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 26(1): 1–17.
Craven, T. C. (200lb). 'DESCRIPTION’ META Tags in Locally Linked Web Pages. Aslib proceedings, 53(6): 203–216.
Dann, G. (1996). The Language of Tourism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Wallingford: CABI.
Gretzel, U. and Wöber, K. (2004). Intelligent Search Support: Building Search Term Associations for Tourism-Specific Search Engines. In Proceedings of ENTER '04, Cairo, Egypt.
Google (2004). Http://www.google.com. (visited August, 2004).
Haralson, D. and Lewis, A. (2004). Brick-and Mortar Travel Agencies Don't Top Travelers' List. USA Today, May 17, 1.
Jeng, J. (1999). Exploring the Travel Planning Hierarchy: An Interactive Web Experiment. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Leisure Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Kim, H. and S. C. Hirtle (1995). Spatial Metaphors and Disorientation in Hypertext Browsing. Behavior and Information Technology, 45(2): 93–102.
Nathenson, Iras S. (1998). Internet Infoglut and Invisible Ink: Spamdexing Search Engines with META Tags. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 12(1): 44–147.
Nielsen, J. (2000). Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. Indianapolis, IN, New Riders Publishing.
Nielsen, J. (2004). When Search Engines Become Answer Engines. Available online at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040816.html (visited in August, 2004).
Nowick, E. A. (2002). Use of META Tags for Internet Documents. Journal of Internet Cataloging, 5(1): 69–75.
Pan, B. and Fesenmaier, D.R. (2003). Travel Information Search on the Internet: A Preliminary Analysis”. In Frew, A. et al. (Eds.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2003 (pp. 242–251). New York: Springer-Verlag Wien.
Sullivan, D. (2002). Death of a META Tag. Available online at http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2165061 (visited in July, 2004).
Vine, R. (2004). The Business of Search Engines: Understanding How Web Advertising, Partnerships, and the Race for Market Dominance Affect Search Tools and Search Results. Information Outlook, February, 2004.
W3C (2004). The Global Structure of an HTML Document. Available online at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html (visited July, 2004).
Wöber, K. (2004). Domain Specific Search Engine. In Fesenmaier et al (Eds.), Travel Destination Recommendation Systems: Behavioral Foundations and Applications. London: CABI (in press).
Woelfel, J. (1993). Artificial Neural Networks for Policy Research. Journal of Communication. 43(1): 63–80.
Yu, C. and W. Meng (2003). Web Search Technology. In Bidgoli. H. (Ed.), The Internet Encyclopedia (pp. 738–751). John Wiley & Sons.
Yuan, Y., Gretzel, U. and Fesenmaier, D.R. (2003). Internet Technology Use by American Convention and Visitors Bureaus. Journal of Travel Research, 41 (February 2003): 240–255.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Wien
About this paper
Cite this paper
Xiang, Z., Fesenmaier, D.R. (2005). Assessing the Initial Step in the Persuasion Process: META Tags on Destination Marketing Websites. In: Frew, A.J. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2005. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-27283-6_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-27283-6_20
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-211-24148-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-211-27283-1