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Abstract. This study developed an Experience-based Tourism Website prototype. Contrast to the
traditional information-based website, users can interacted with the website to arrange their own
customized schedule and the system will generated a tour handbook for their scheduled tour. 107
users were recruited to participate in this study in order to test the effectiveness of the
Experience-based Tourism Website. The result indicated that our website can increase users
experience with the website and then increase their intention to visit the remote location we are
promoting. We were convinced that the Experience-based Tourism Website can be a helping hand for
organizations that try to do destination marketing on the Internet, especially for those organizations
that are working on infamous remote areas.
1. Introduction
Tourism marketing and promotion is clearly essential for successful tourism development for any
locations (Cities, Areas, Countries). Moreover, tourism marketing has become increasingly complex.
It is no longer concerned simply with representing or conveying an image of a place, but with
attempting to sell an experience of a place by explicitly relating to the lifestyles of consumers [1].
Even though various research has focused on the analysis of the ways in which tourism marketing and
branding actively creates and constructs certain destinations for development [2]. However, for a
remote area that lack of resources and fame, trying to practice destination marketing by the traditional
way of doing can be a task that near to mission impossible.
Destination Marketing is "a proactive, strategic, visitor-centered approach to the economic and
cultural development of a location, which balances and integrates the interests of visitors, service
providers, and the community." [3]. Nowadays, the Internet is becoming a pervasive environmental
element for tourist consumers and their family. The Internet is similar to these innovations in that it
allows tourism organization to communicate with their customer [4]. However, unlike typical
technology-enabled interactions between consumers and firms, the consumer role in online
interactions is active and self-initiated. For example, while online obtaining information, negotiating
terms, and making purchases, customers control when the interactions occur, their duration, their
content, and their scope. Confronting with this Internet circumstances, many marketing researchers
have drawn their attention to the experiential nature of goods and services [5].
Both consumption and decision making processes related to tourism are to a large extent driven by
hedonic and emotional aspects [6] and memory of trips are a function of trip-related experiences and
the stories we construct from them. This recognition of the experiential nature of tourism and of new
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consumer trends calls for marketing approaches that make use of innovative ways for communicating
tourism experiences [7].
When someone wants to do destination marketing for a specific location, they usually will set up a
tourism website for their campaign. Traditionally, these website is served as an information source
only, But based on the previous research findings, we can concluded that if the website can provide
enough utility and value recognized by interactive with their users, it may increase users intention to
visit. In another words, by creating potential customers virtue experience related to the location, the
website can be a critical tool for destination marketing especially for those remote areas.
This study focuses on the tourism websites that are doing destination marketing for some remote
areas. The researchers of this paper proposed that interactivity can be put into the traditional tourism
website and increase users intention to visit by create their virtue experience with the remote areas.
In this paper, we will investigate the relationship between Intention to Visit and both the Experience
with Website and the Experience with Location. The Four Realms of Experience proposed by [8]
were used to measure the users Experience with Website. And the factors, proposed by [9] which
influence the use of communications relate to recreation and tourism experiences, were used to
represent users Experience with Location.
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theory-everyone talks about it, but look for any traces in the records and it just isnt there.
Nevertheless, there are more than 80% of Taiwanese tourists are now self-service travelers.
According to the survey [17], these self-service travelers are more than travelers but
experience-seekers. They were always looking for new location to enrich their memorable
experiences. But still, for these self-service travelers, the design of those tourist websites could
neither help them customize their own tours nor improve their intention to tour an unfamiliar location.
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Hypothesis 3: When users have higher experience with the location, they will have higher intention
to pay a visit to the location that promoted by the website.
5. Method
In this study, the experiment scenario was defined after several preliminary studies in order to ensure
the effectiveness of the settings. The destination that our website wanted to promote is the Yun-Pin
County, a not-so-popular tourism region in Taitung which located in the southeast side of the Taiwan
island. The Yun-Pin County comprised of four aboriginal communities with unique natural and
cultural resources and some dramatic geological features. The participants of this study were
recruited through ad banners posted on a leading commercial website in Taiwan: www.sogi.com. In
this experiment, participants were asked to use our tourism website to schedule a trip to Yun-Pin. We
have 117 people volunteer to participate in the experiment, among them, 107 participants were
selected and they were then divided into the following groups:
1 Group A: Traditional Tourism Website
Participants in Group A use a website 100% copy from a commercial tourism website in Taiwan.
On this website, they can browse the tourist information on the website and read several suite of
tourist schedule suggested by the website.
2 Group B: Website with Interactive Scheduling
Participants in Group B use the same website just like Group A. But their website also allow them
to use the scheduling function in order to interact with the website to arrange their customized
schedules.
3 Group C: Website with Interactive Scheduling and Customized Tour Handbook
Participants in Group C use the same website just like Group B. After they have finished their
scheduling process, their website allowed them to generate a customized tour handbook for their own
touring schedules.
After their usage of the website, a questionnaire was distributed to those participants. The
questionnaire contained 31 psychographic and 6 respondent demographic items (i.e., gender, age,
education, occupation, online experience, length of online experience). The psychographic items
were taken from prior research studies and refined through focus group discussions and interviews
with experienced tourists. Responses were measured on 5-point Likert-type scales (1 = strongly
disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The questionnaire was organized into three sections: Experience with
Website (13), Experience with Location (15), and Intention to Visit (3).
6. Research finding
Among the 107 questionnaires distributed in the experiment, 97 were returned and usable,
representing a 90.7% response rate. All reliability measures were >0.6 besides aesthetic and sign
constructs of experience with location (Item No. 24~28). Therefore, aesthetic and sign constructs of
Table 1. Construct items and reliabilities
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aesthetic 24,25 0.272
sign 26,27,28 0.583
Intention to Visit Intention to Visit 29,30,31 0.822
experience with location are deleted in the study. The -level of the sample indicates a reasonable
level of reliability (>0.60) [23], demonstrating adequate internal consistency in Table 1.
Table 2. Test of group difference on Experience with Website, Experience with Location and Intention to Visit
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2 The means of education construct of experience with website in Group C are significantly
higher than Group A (p=0.002). There are not significant differences in the means of education
construct of experience with website between Group A and Group B as well as Group B and Group C.
Therefore, using interactive scheduling function and handbook generating function at the same time
have a higher effect on education construct of experience with website.
3 The means of entertainment construct of experience with website in Group B (p=0.017) and
Group C (p=0.004) are significantly higher than Group A. But there are not significant differences
between Group B and Group C. The results indicate that the using interactive scheduling function
influence the entertainment construct of experience with website but the document does not influence
it.
The means of esthetics construct of experience with website in Group C are significantly higher
than Group A (p=0.02). There are not significant differences in the means of education construct of
experience with website between Group A and Group B as well as Group B and Group C. Therefore,
using interactive scheduling function and handbook generating function at the same time have a
higher impact on the esthetics construct of experience with website.
The results of regression analysis testing (Table 3) include path coefficients and R2 values. The
path coefficients are the relationships between the dependent and independent constructs. The R2
values represent the degree to which variance is explained by independent constructs. The test of
research model indicated that the experience with website positively affect the experience with
location (=0.656, p<0.01). The experience with location has a positive effect on intention to visit
(=0.652, p<0.01).
Table 3. The result of the regression analysis
Significant path
*** p<0.01** p<0.05* p<0.1
Non-Significant path
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