Digital Divide in Tourism: An Exploration of the Digital Divide Through Quantitative Analysis of the World’s National Tourism Organisations Websites

Abstract

This paper tests hypotheses supporting a theory linking competitiveness of tourism destinations to the digital divide. National Tourism Organisations (NTOs) websites across the world were first evaluated for quality. The website quality scores were then analysed against destination digital access index cate- gories to establish the validity of the hypotheses supporting the theory. Most inaccessible website cases were from low digital access destinations. NTO web- sites scores had weak positive correlations with the respective country indices (0.21–0.25). High digital access destinations had significantly higher NTO website mean scores than the other destination categories. The mean differences were not significant for site attractiveness, trip planner assistance, and ease of contact factors. To attract high digital access tourists, organisations in low digital access destinations must improve their web accessibility, ease of navigation, and mar- keting factors. High digital access tourists most likely originate from countries with high digital connectivity, concentrated in the Europe region.