Travel sites a dead end says critic

Tourism operators get some in-your-face criticism, writes MICHAEL FOREMAN.

A United States internet marketing expert has criticised New Zealand travel-related websites as being hard to navigate, containing too much text, and lacking in interactivity.

"Worst of all, they do not place enough emphasis on me, the visitor," said Jim Sterne, chief executive of Santa Barbara-based Target Marketing.

Mr Sterne, speaking at the E-commerce Summit in Auckland last Thursday, apologised to his audience of travel industry operators before launching into a hard-hitting but amusing critique of several local travel sites.

"If I am showing your site I'm sorry, but yes, your babies are ugly," he said.

Mr Sterne said New Zealand website owners should try to put themselves in the place of the average visitor from the United States, who knew next to nothing about this country.

Internet users who were thinking of visiting New Zealand were interested in what activities the country offered rather than details such as visas and foreign exchange, which they would tackle later.

Many sites featured maps of New Zealand and its cities, even though these were as meaningless to a US visitor as maps of American cities were to New Zealanders.

"How is that going to help you to discover what you are going to be able to do there?" Mr Sterne asked as he displayed a map of Santa Barbara.

New Zealand sites, including Tourism New Zealand's also ignored standard internet menu "dashboards."

Each of 10 websites Mr Sterne visited had a different navigation system.

While praising the Jasons Travel Media site, which included a rare example of interactivity by offering searches of content based on the activities a user was interested in, he criticised some Jasons advertisers who had included only telephone and fax numbers as contact details.

"As a [US-based] net user I want to stay on the net - I don't even know what time it is in New Zealand and whether it's all right to call," he said.

While Mr Sterne's comments appeared to be well received by the audience, several local speakers painted a more positive picture of local e-commerce in tourism.

David Lane, a business consultant at Wellington-based Synergy International, said that out of 1.7 million inbound travellers per year, around 80,000-120,000 had booked their travel on the internet.

Tourism New Zealand figures show each visitor spent an average $2749 while here. Mr Lane estimated that around $250 to $400 of that would have been internet-booked.

"We are therefore looking at a $20 million to $50 million industry for New Zealand," said Mr Lane, who estimated that by 2004 about 10 per cent of all domestic leisure travel would be internet-booked.

However, New Zealand's tourism industry still lacked a fully comprehensive e-commerce supply chain.

While airlines and most accommodation were well covered there were gaps in some sectors including ground transport, inbound retailers and individual attractions.

Glenys Coughlan, chairwoman of the New Zealand Tourism Industry Association, said a recent poll had revealed that all of her association's members were now using the internet in some way.

But their degree of sophistication varied.

While 7 per cent of members using the net for e-mail only, 93 per cent of members had established a website.

Of its members' websites, 25 per cent allowed visitors to "look," 32 per cent were "look and book" sites, and 36 per cent offered full "look, book and settle" functions.

Herald Online Travel

Tourism New Zealand

Jasons Travel