The Practices of Internet Users in Their Appropriation of Websites of Destination Management Organizations

Abstract

This paper sheds light on the way in which Internet users appropriate tourism websites. We refer to a study conducted on users of a website of a destination management organization (DMO) in Canada. That study, which includes extensive conversations held with the users, has the following hypothesis: Actors-producers of information tend to apply a logic of mass dissemination of information, whereas actors-users tend to apply an interactive, personalized and one-to-one communication logic. The results seem to confirm the thesis of our paper. Comments and suggestions gathered during the interviews allowed to identify many discrepancies between the actors-producers and the actors-users. For one, the information offered by the actors-producers did not meet the information demands of the actors-users of the site. Neither did certain ergonomic functionalities offered on the site respond to the ergonomic functionalities requested by the users. The results allow to go beyond a simple identification of discrepancies. The user comments constitute valuable information for website designers and managers who wish to reduce those discrepancies. Our paper demonstrates some of the many possibilities for making improvements. These include tree structure, symbols and icons, and above all, interactivity. As early as 1986, Rogers identified interactivity as a chief determinant of user acceptance. He defined interactivity as “the capacity of the new communication systems to respond to users almost like an individual who is taking part in a conversation”. Interactivity is also a notion at the centre of the debate on user autonomy (Kim and Lee, 2002). Supporters of the appropriation approach recognize interactivity as a main prerequisite for proceeding with the evaluation of websites. Researchers studying interactive communication acknowledge the potential of the Internet to promote exchanges and study new ways of communicating. Many of these researchers find that the Internet is still regarded more as an extension of a mass dissemination tool rather than an occasion to explore new communication methods: To communicate in networks in an interactive and personalized way would pose new challenges for the actors-producers of information as well as the actors-users, as underlined by Castells (2001). To date, very few studies on tourism websites have applied the appropriation theory to try and understand user appropriation. With this paper, we hope to offer an original contribution to research on that topic.