ABSTRACT
The article aims to evaluate the official destination website of Maharashtra, the leading tourism state in India, through user judgment approach. After extensive review of literature, the researchers have proposed the instrument to measure the performance of the destination website from customer perspective. The instrument developed, namely “Destination website evaluation scale”, measured website on the basis of five critical success factors: quality of information, ease of use, customization and interactivity, identity- and trust-building components and online booking. Reliability and validity tests applied confirmed the usefulness of the instrument. User ratings (collected from 300 respondents) have made the researcher to understand the preferred attributes of the website. Statistical “t test” was used to compare the gap between importance and performance of attributes. The findings revealed that, except the factor “identity- and trust-building components”, there is a huge gap (significant difference) between the importance and performance of various website attributes. Therefore, constructive suggestions were given for improvement of the identified critical success factors of website. The findings are helpful for destination marketing organization to acknowledge online information preferences and e-consumer behavior.
