To What Extent Are Chilean Regional Tourism Organisations (Rtos) Leveraging Web Technologies To Promote Regional Tourism?

The information-intensive nature of the tourism and travel industry suggests an important role for Web technology in the promotion and marketing of tourist destinations. With reports of travel purchases and reservations being one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet community (eMarketer, 2002), it is no surprise that the number of tourism operators on the Web has increased considerably in recent years. This paper presents the results of a study of the use of Web technologies by Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) in the Chilean tourism industry. The Extended Model of Internet Commerce Adoption (eMICA) (Burgess and Cooper, 2000) is used to assess the web sites of RTOs to determine the extent of adoption of web technologies for destination marketing. A significant finding of this study is the number of RTOs sites offering Stage 3 functionality ( transaction processing). The results of the study support the findings of earlier studies, that is, in developing commercial websites, businesses in this industry sector typically start simply by establishing a presence on the Web and build on functionality over time, as their experience and expertise in the use of Internet technologies increases.