{"id":552298,"date":"2007-05-17T15:40:14","date_gmt":"2007-05-17T15:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/552298-sa-tourism-websites-useless.html"},"modified":"2007-05-17T15:40:14","modified_gmt":"2007-05-17T15:40:14","slug":"sa-tourism-websites-useless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/552298-sa-tourism-websites-useless.html","title":{"rendered":"SA tourism websites &#8216;useless&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\">Ian Kruger, director of BlueRiverStone, a company that recently completed research into South African tourism websites, said the local market was not taking full advantage of the functions of internet marketing. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">Visitors for the 2010 FIFA World Cup will make use of the internet to reserve accommodation and transport, and should the local market not provide suitable websites a great deal of business could be lost, the researchers found. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;Online inefficiencies will hinder the growth needed to elevate our tourism industry to a similar status as that of our international counterparts,&quot; Kruger said. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">Some 100 websites were assessed. The websites were evaluated against 120 metrics covering things like finding the website, its content and functionality. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;We looked at all the basic elements that make up the experience and quality of service online like locating the site, its content, the ability to actually do business online, or use it as a resource for full contact information,&quot; said Kruger. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;In essence, tourism is all about the experience, and how a potential visitor experiences our country starts right at the beginning when he is looking for information about the destination.&quot; <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">He said if the online experience was frustrating, the country may lose that tourist to another popular international destination. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php?t=75399\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<p \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The inefficient use of the internet by local tourism marketers will lead to business loss, researchers said on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}