Website maturity of Indian and Malaysian Regional Tourism Organization (RTO) websites: a benchmark study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess and compare the relative maturity of Indian and Malaysian Regional Tourism Organisations’ (RTO) websites by using the extended Model of Internet Commerce Adoption (eMICA) developed by Burgess and Cooper (2000). This is a crosssectional study using passive primary data collected through structured observation of the website features. The results indicate that the entire Malaysian websites are reached in certain level of maturity but though some of the Indian RTOs are highly developed and some are in the beginning stage of the eMICA. This study provides a way to assess the development of destination-wide eTourism in India and Malaysia by measuring the relative maturity of RTO websites. The finding can help individual organizations to evaluate and monitor over time their ‘Net-readiness’