Alessandro Inversini

Evaluating Web usability with MiLE

Web sites (or more in general interactive applications) need to be evaluated from a usability perspective for improving their quality for the end-users. This paper introduces a systematic methodology called MiLE+, which proposes an innovative approach to usability evaluation under several aspects. The main original feature is the separation between application-independent analysis (based on usability principles) and application-dependent analysis (based on the requirements of the application). The paper explores the differences between these types of analysis and presents the activities for carrying them out in an effective way.

Information Convergence in the Long Tail: The Case of Tourism Destination Information

Tourism information on the Internet is spreading through a wide range of different websites. In addition to the official destination or attraction websites, many are unofficial websites such as blogs, wiki, social networks, which offer destination information. Hence official websites, being destination or attraction sites, are challenged by unofficial ones. Actually these two different types of websites often diffuse similar content in terms of topics and subjects but in different forms. This study explores the information market around a given tourism destination and investigates the characteristics and quality of the available websites. It underlines the importance of consumer generated content and its strategic role for the promotion. Finally, several ways of exploiting the official and unofficial contents are explored and the topic of the possible information convergence, thanks to folksonomies, is discussed.

Applying a Conceptual Framework to Analyze Online Reputation of Tourism Destinations

Destination managers are investing considerable efforts (time and money) in order to market their destination online without considering that unofficial information competitors (e.g. blogs, wiki, media sharing website etc) are gaining more and more popularity among internet users. This research uses online reputation as a metric to make sense out of the huge amount of user generated contents available online applying a conceptual framework to the reputation analysis: Destination Online Reputation (DORM). The model, derived from the popular models used in corporate reputation analysis has been tested within the tourism online domain accessible trough search engine of a popular English destination: London. Results demonstrate the validity of the model in understanding and managing destination online reputation.

Cultural Destination Usability: The Case of Visit Bath

This research describes the usability evaluation of the website of Bath’s Destination Management Organization (DMO). A proven usability methodology called MiLE+ has been used and a Usability kit (Ukit) for the e Tourism (and particularly for the web communication of cultural destination) field has been created. The Ukit is composed by a library of scenarios of use (user profiles, user goals, user tasks) and heuristics for the evaluation. Ukit has been created and validated also thanks to usage analysis (1 year time frame) which has been performed also to confirm, where possible, the results of the inspection.

MySwitzerland.com: analysis of online communication and promotion.

This research investigates the current state of technology adoption of a popular tourism destination: Switzerland. This case study has been elaborated leveraging on existing literature, public documents, and private statistics; it describes the importance of technology-mediated communication and promotion within the Swiss National Tourism Board, highlighting the achievements and envisaging the future steps. Thanks to an online communication model, the website of the Swiss Tourism Board (MySwitzerland.com) has been investigated, taking into account the following dimensions: content functionalities, graphical user interface, people who administrate, people who visit the website, and information market. The analysis shows the importance of the online channel and the technology adoption of this destination management organization.

Connecting Usages with Usability Analysis through the User Experience Risk Assessment Model: A Case Study in the Tourism Domain

Web usability evaluation methods have been traditionally considered as detached from the analysis of the actual usages of a web applications. While the former is typically delegated to web engineers or web designers, the latter seems to be a concern only for online marketing experts. Based on our previous research results, in this paper we present a holistic evaluation model that seamlessly integrates usability and usage analysis in the assessment of the communication quality of a web application. Specifically, we apply this model to the analysis of BravoFly website (a Swiss Online Travel Agent) and we illustrate how the results of this integrated evaluation can shed new light in intelligently prioritizing re-design interventions. Implications for online tourism communication managers and researchers in this area are discussed.

From Paradigmatic to Syntagmatic Communities: A Socio-Semiotic Approach to the Evolution Pattern of Online Travel Communities

This paper presents the results of an observatory research which explores the users’ participation in three different travel related virtual communities. The behaviour of the first top ten users has been observed in three different timeframes recording both outcoming interactions (e.g. from the studied user to other users) and incoming ones (e.g. from other users to the studied one). Then, a socio-semiotic linguistic approach has been adopted to explain the users’ behaviour and to hypothesize a possible evolution pattern for the communities.

Hotel Websites and Booking Engines: A Challenging Relationship

This study analyses the relationship between corporate hotel websites and corporate hotel booking engines. These two systems are critical in the hospitality sector: the hotel website is an important means for online hospitality marketing, while the hotel booking engine represents the possibility of conversion without intermediation fees for the hoteliers. In light of a case study of one of the major Italian hotel chains, this paper explores a possible way to analyze the activities performed on the two systems by exploring different possible correlations to assess the importance of inter-system communication. The case study shows, on one hand, that the more visits a hotel website receive, the more bookings are made on the corporate booking engine. Conversely, the time spent on the website does not have any influence on actual bookings.

Harvesting Online Contents: An Analysis of Hotel Reviews Websites

Hotel Reviews Websites (HRWs) are the most used online sources to evaluate accommodation alternatives. However, they often present an overwhelming amount of unstructured or only semi-structured information which is not shared between all the systems and which cannot be easily analyzed in an automatic way. This study aims to automatically analyse hotel evaluations for a given number of Swiss hotels by comparing hotel reviews. Furthermore, the consistency of users’ countries of origin in their evaluations has been studied. The results show that there is an overall agreement on considered HRWs and a general consistency among reviewers with different countries of origin.

When a Magazine Goes Online: A Case Study in the Tourism Field

In this paper, the digital hybridization of travel magazines is studied, presenting how they are using their online presence to extend their reach and expand their business. This is done by means of a grid, designed to cluster all the types of content and functionalities offered online by 120 different travel magazines, giving a synthetic overview of their actual use of the internet. Actually, when entering the online world, travel magazines get many elements that are not affordable on a printed paper, while at the same time losing other elements. But this process is not just a matter of adding or removing features; rather, it requires a deep re-consideration and re-invention of online travel communication itself, offering venues for new business models and for new agreements between the magazines and their readers, yielding to a new communication landscape.