African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (Aug 2019)
Measuring website effectiveness in communicating tourism destinations in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Abstract
Tourism is one of the largest sectors contributing to foreign exchange in Indonesia, especially for the Special Capital City District of Jakarta (hereinafter referred to as DKI Jakarta) as it is the capital city and major tourism destination of Indonesia. In accordance with the development of technology and the continuously increasing tourism information needs, the internet plays a significant role in communicating a tourism destination to a market. This research aimed at investigating the effectiveness of DKI Jakarta tourism websites in communicating the superiority of DKI Jakarta tourism destinations in attracting tourists to visit the area. This research employed a quantitative method with 240 participants as the research sample and were randomly selected from eight superior tourism sites in DKI Jakarta. To assess the effectiveness of the DKI Jakarta tourism websites, the EPIC (Empathy, Persuasion, Impact and Communication) model was adopted, while the data was analyzed using the SPSS statistical method. The research results show that, in general, DKI Jakarta tourism websites are adequately effective in representing tourism in DKI Jakarta (total score = 2.82). However, on each dimensional assessment, there were still some significant differences found. The score of the impact variable was relatively small (1.96). It indicates that the DKI Jakarta tourism website displays are less effective and do not have a significant impact in attracting the potential tourists’ and their interests. On the other hand, the communication variable had the highest score (3.28). This indicates that the communication patterns in DKI Jakarta tourism websites both verbally and non-verbally, are good enough and result in the potential tourists’ understanding more about the area. In general, the research results are expected to become a reference for the development of tourism promotion in DKI Jakarta so that its tourism sectors may optimally develop and be sustainable.
