The Importance of Value-Added Services to Support the Customer Search and Purchase Process on Travel Websites

This article explores one potential reason for the online tourism market’s slower than expected growth rate. It investigates to what extent value-added services provided by websites for tour operators and travel agencies are actually perceived as important by the customer in the search and purchase process. An adapted version of a consumer decision process model is used and the results are based on a Web survey. The results show that most value-added services are perceived to be most important in the search and/or purchase phase and that no value-added services are perceived to be most important in the postconsumption phase. Based on this it is suggested that travel websites should try and develop more value-added services aimed at supporting the customer in the postconsumption phase in order to build strong customer relationships and loyalty, which may lead to continuous buying behavior.